Transforming Love
by jylener22
Summary: Orihime is the young queen ruling over the country of Rikka, while Ichigo is the Crown Prince of Tensho. Both countries face the threat of invasion, but Orihime is forced away from her throne when her adopted sisters are suddenly and strangely threatened.
1. Queen Orihime Inoue

Transforming Love: Part 1

"And as the newly freed swans looked up and saw the rising sun, it seemed to them as if they could see the spirits of the reunited prince and his swan princess happily floating to heaven where they would never again have to part from one another."

"Well, that's just stupid."

Orihime was not at all surprised to hear Tatsuki's voice break the silence first and the girl continued in a skeptical tone, "What on earth could possess that swan princess to jump in the first place? And to top that off, the prince was stupid enough to go in after her. It's one thing to accidentally fall off a cliff, but to purposely throw yourself off of one is complete and utter stupidity and the world is better off without those suicidal nuts around."

Before Orihime could say anything, Chizuru's annoyed voice at having her daydream interrupted by Tatsuki's outburst cut across Orihime as Chizuru burst out, "It's completely romantic! She jumped in to save him and her friends while he followed her because he couldn't bear to live his life without her! How can you call yourself a girl and not feel moved by this story?"

Tatsuki let out a short laugh as she replied, "Just because I am a girl, doesn't mean I actually have to 'ooh' and 'ahh' over such sappy, melodramatic, unrealistic fairy tales! Some of us actually have brain matter contained within our skulls rather than stuffing it full of images of knights in shining armor riding in to save the damsel in distress."

Nemu's calm voice cut in saying, "As you said Tatsuki, this story is simply a fairy tale and so there is no need to get so worked up over the outcome of the story as it will likely never happen. And Chizuru, Tatsuki is abnormal in other ways, so why is it so surprising and disconcerting to you that she does not enjoy fairy tales?"

Orihime wanted to groan as she imagined how both girls would react to Nemu's accurate but ill-timed comments, when Yachiru decided to take it upon herself to shift the topic of conversation when she gleefully launched herself onto Orihime asking, "Hey! So what were you talking about with Sir Aizen today, Hime?"

Feeling all of her adopted sisters' gazes upon her, Orihime somehow managed to reply in a breezy voice, "Oh nothing of importance really. He had some questions about-"

"Whether or not you would reconsider his proposal?" Rukia interrupted and then continued, "When are you going to send that man, if you could even call that creepy individual a man, packing, Orihime? You know Father had been on the verge of doing so just before he died, don't you?"

Before Orihime could reply, Isane jumped in the conversation saying, "I don't think any of us here actually appreciate Sir Aizen's company here, but what can Orihime do? We all know Father didn't trust that man, but to the rest of the world Sir Aizen has been something of a guardian angel to all of us. He has stayed with us for the past three years trying to help us bring peace and order to Orihime's kingdom and staunchly supported her rule as queen despite her young age and inexperience."

Rukia rolled her eyes, "Yeah, he's staunchly stood by Orihime all this time because she would either follow his advice and therefore make himself look wise in counsel, or it is possible that he is guiding her in such a way that if something tragic happens to this country it would be all Orihime's fault and then people would look to him next to lead them and rule over them."

"We are all perfectly aware of this fact, Rukia, but as Isane stated before, we are the only ones who seem to know this fact about Orihime's loyal advisor and prospective beau," said Nemu in her logical, monotone voice.

At this point, Momo took it upon herself to end the bickering when she said, "I ready to go to bed. You guys can continue this discussion or argument or whatever you want to call it as much as you want as long as someone is kind enough to blow out the candles first so that the rest of us can get some sleep."

When all the candles in the room had been extinguished, it became immediately apparent that none of the sisters wished to continue and so all gradually fell asleep. Orihime was one of the last to fall asleep as her thoughts were a jumbled mess by that point.

Queen Orihime Inoue was ruler over the country of Rikka and lived in Shun-Shun Castle. She had taken power when her father, King Naruhito Inoue, had passed away a little over three years previously. The pressures of the crown had been hard on the 17 year old Orihime, but she had learned quickly in the past three years how to be the best ruler she could be. In her opinion, however, her main reason for being able to cope with her father's untimely death and the responsibility that had been suddenly placed upon her was due to the fact that she had seven supportive sisters.

Orihime's mother had passed away when Orihime was two years old, so the young princess did not remember her well but she did become very lonely. King Naruhito had had no intention of taking another wife, but many evenings he would sit up late at night remembering how he and his wife had always planned on having a big family together. He wanted to fulfill that dream, not only for the sake of his wife's memory but also so that his daughter would not feel so alone and friendless.

One day, he had taken time away from his regular duties to spend some time with his daughter and so took her out riding with him. The two of them had ridden for hours, stopping at brooks to inspect the different life living in the water, passing meadows and taking time to collect some flowers and watched the different birds flying and the king had helped his daughter learn which birds were which. All too soon, it had been time for them to return, but on the way, Orihime had spotted a small form huddled against a tree. She had asked for her father to stop so she could investigate and they had discovered a young girl about a year older than Orihime who had been brutally beaten and looked to be on the brink of death. It had not been necessary for Orihime to plead with her father to help the girl and so the horse that had gone out from the castle bearing two royal persons came back carrying the beginning of a new family.

Rukia was the first adopted daughter and so she and Orihime shared a special bond between them since they were the first two sisters in the Inoue family. When Rukia woke up, she was quite startled to find a cloth canopy over her head rather than a tree covering and a bubbly, energetic four year old girl bouncing up and down next to her bed.

"Hello little girl! How are you? I hope you're feeling better today! Daddy and I found you in the forest and brought you home with us so I hope you didn't have any fairy or elf friends looking for you because I would really like it if you would stay here with me and be my new sister!"

When Rukia was finally given the chance to talk, the five year old girl could only really say that she had been taken away from her family by a really bad man whom she could not remember and that she didn't know where her family was or if they were still alive since there had been a big fire destroying her home as she was being carried off in the middle of the night. Rukia had then woken up to see about three men gathered around a campfire and not paying any attention to her, so she had snuck away and fallen asleep under the tree where Orihime and the king had found her. Any search or investigation that King Naruhito had conducted in order to find Rukia's family or any information about her had all been in vain, so in the end he had asked if the small girl would like to be his daughter and after a moment's thought Rukia had accepted his offer.

It was not long after that point that the Inoue family grew even more with the addition of Tatsuki who became Orihime's next best friend and sister. Then Nemu and Isane were added to their number, followed by Chizuru, after that Momo and finally a baby Yachiru. Orihime was never told and didn't think to ask her sisters what their life had been like before the king had adopted them, because she knew that if they wanted to tell her, they would in their own time. Orihime had gained seven sisters over the years and together they had grown up and lavished their love and attention on each other and their doting father. It was not at all uncommon to find the nine members of the Inoue family playing games in the gardens, making each other laugh in the portrait gallery with different impressions of the subjects staring down at them from on high, or making late night treks to the highest tower in order to stargaze.

The sudden death of King Naruhito shook the entire country of Rikka to the core, especially his daughters. Since Orihime was the only blood relation to the late king, it had obviously fallen to her to succeed her father as ruler of Rikka.

It was at that point that a courtier, who had never really made much of an impression on any of the Inoue girls, suddenly began integrating himself into their lives. Sir Aizen had made a name for himself in the past three years as the advisor and loyal supporter of the young Queen Orihime and he was loved by all. For Orihime and her sisters, they wisely kept their wariness of Sir Aizen to themselves since they were not sure what is was about him that made them feel uneasy and also they were not quite sure how powerful he really was and what his actual plans were for the country. He could be a completely honest and open person who really did have Orihime and the countries best interests at heart…the Inoue's were not at all convinced though.

Yawning, Orihime turned over and decided that for the time being, she and her sisters were safe from whatever Sir Aizen might be planning and so drifted off to sleep. And so ended the calm before a long and arduous storm in Orihime's life…

**Author's Note:**

So, this is the first story that I will be uploading that I will be working on chapters in between postings since, at this point in time, I am still in the process of writing it. It is, in a sense, going to be fresh off the presses.

Just a little bit of an explanation behind this story, I have always loved fairy tales and fantasy since I was little. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Brothers Grimm and other classics have been a part of my book collection for years and I am constantly fascinated by them. I was inspired to attempt combining my love of fairy tales with my favorite anime couple of all time when I read Sariniste's absolutely fantastic story 'The Princess of the Ashes', which turns Orihime into the ever so popular character, Cinderella. She did an absolutely phenomenal job with that story and so I wanted to do something similar.

This story is going to combine elements from the fairy tales 'The Six Swans' and 'Swan Lake', more commonly known as a ballet, and I might throw in nuances from other fairy tales as well depending on how well they fit into my storyline or on a needful basis.

I hope you enjoy journeying through the Realm of Society of Souls with me!


	2. Crown Prince Ichigo Kurosaki

Transforming Love: Part 2

"You have got to be kidding. Tell me you're joking. Someone, anyone, tell me that I did not just hear this old buffoon correctly. Tell me that this idiot is not trying to marry me off to the first person he can find. You'd better not have sent that emissary already, or I will ride out after him and drag him back here. Or better yet, I will drag you along with me if it is already too late and have you explain how you sent this marriage proposal without my knowledge or consent."

The king of Tensho sat calmly on his throne, waiting until his absolutely furious son had to pause in order to take a breath before he addressed his only heir saying, "If you have finished your little tantrum, and believe me when I say I am not at all put out by your outburst since that is probably the longest speech I've gotten from you in years, allow me to dismiss the court so that we may speak more freely than you have already done."

The Crown Prince's cheeks colored slightly but he did not look at all ashamed or apologetic as he gave an assenting nod of the head. The lords and ladies of the court waited for the king's signal before they made the proper gestures of respect for the king and his most honored son and politely made their way from the throne room until only the handle of trusted guards remained around the perimeter of the room. It was a few minutes before either of them spoke.

"How could you?"

The king took a deep breath, exhaled slowly then said softly, "I'm sorry, son."

A slight pause before the prince spoke in the same hushed voice, "I thought we had an understanding. I thought I was to have a year or two to seek out a bride for myself and if I had not found someone on my own then I would allow you to send out emissary's to inquire about marriage candidates. So, I ask you again, how could you?"

"Unfortunately, situations throughout the land and even the continent are much different than they were a few months ago. Everyone, from ambassadors to scouts to even rumors I have heard from servants whispering in the hallways, has been talking about the armies from the countries of Vizard and Hueco Mundo have created an alliance and are planning to take control over the entire continent of Society of Souls. Our country is not strong enough to stand on its own against the vast army of one of those countries, let alone both, so I have sent out emissaries requesting the countries of Rikka, Zenbonzakura and Shihoin create an alliance with us so that all four of our countries may stand against the otherwise overwhelming forces and have a chance of defeating them."

"I still don't understand what that has to do wit-"

"I wasn't finished, Ichigo. The emissaries I sent out came back with the news that the other countries did wish to band together and so we agreed to hold an official council in a week's time to have all the proper documents completed. There was, however, one country that had a condition. The country of Rikka wished for us to find someone of suitable rank and birth to marry their queen. Even though the missive was not explicit, my advisors and I knew they had you in mind."

King Isshin held up his hand to stem his son's outburst and said, "Let me say one thing more and then I will let you speak. I have never told you this because up until the past month it was my dearest wish that you would have the opportunity to choose a bride for yourself. When you were still young, however, your mother and I were rather good friends of the Inoue family and for a time before both King Naruhito's and my own dear wife died, all four of us had begun to consider betrothing the two of you while you were still young. After the deaths of Masaki and Tohru, King Naruhito and I decided that we would allow you two to grow up and choose your own paths when the time was right since we both understood the importance of living together with your soul mate. Up until his death, Naruhito and I kept up correspondence, telling the other how our children were growing up and never quite giving up hope that the two of you would meet one day and fall in love. Queen Orihime ascended to the throne after her father's death three years ago when she was seventeen and despite her youth and inexperience, it seems she has proved to be a capable, generous and kind-hearted ruler. Despite what you might think of me right now, it has never been my intention to force you into this marriage. If you still feel unprepared, I will send an emissary stating that we cannot accept their proposal."

Prince Ichigo stood silently for a time shifting his gaze thoughtfully from the windows to the floor to the wall behind the throne before his gaze finally settled on his father as he asked, "You would do that for me? Despite what it might mean for the kingdom?"

King Isshin merely nodded his head as the prince ran a hand slowly through his hair then rubbed the back of his neck as he said, "Thank you, Father, for your honest opinion. I can see you did not come to this decision lightly and are only trying to fulfill your obligation to the people as I will do as well."

The king got up from his throne and walked up to his son saying, "The last thing I want you to do is to approach this marriage as if it is your duty. To be perfectly honest, all missives I have received on this point have come from the queen's advisor, a Sir Aizen, so I don't think the queen herself has any knowledge of these proceedings. If what I gleaned from her father's letters for all those years is correct, Orihime is a tender-hearted, compassionate and lively girl whose heart could be an absolute treasure for the man who can win it. You are something of a recluse when it comes to dealing with people and if you agree to this marriage because you believe it is your duty, you will unconsciously close yourself off from this girl and all she has to offer before you have even given her a chance. Marriage is a lifetime commitment and therefore not something to be taken lightly. While love is not the only factor one has to consider when looking for a marriage partner, it can play a key role. I want you to take a day or two to think this over before you give me an answer."

The prince nodded his head slowly before he said, "I suppose you're right. I'm sorry for my harsh words earlier."

The king nodded his head in a sage manner before he replied, "No harm done to me, my son. Your outburst only affected your image in the eyes of the court and even then probably only slightly since they all know you to be a rather surly character. By the way, how did you hear about the marriage proposal? I was fairly sure only my advisors and myself knew anything about it."

The prince replied in the one word of explanation the king needed to understand everything, "Keigo."

The king sighed and asked, "When will that boy grow up? Where did he hide this time?"

Prince Ichigo grinned as he answered, "Never and I believe he mentioned something about a suit of armor."

"I thought I heard an odd rattling sound. And I thought for sure I had taken care of all possible hiding spots in that room. If that boy were not the son of a noble, I'm sure he would make an absolutely terrific spy."

Prince Ichigo rolled his eyes as he said, "Probably, but if he were ever caught all they'd have to do was pinch him and he'd start spilling all the secrets he could possibly think of."

Looking out the window, the prince said, "Thank you for your time and explanation, Father. I certainly have a lot to think about while I go out and inspect the training grounds. Sire."

As he spoke the last word, the prince gave his father and king a deferential bow before turning and making his way out of the throne room. He had almost reached the enormous double doors when he suddenly turned around and deflected a fist and then a foot from connecting with his head and stomach respectively.

He shook his head in exasperation as he said in a weary voice, "And you criticize Keigo's childish pranks. I don't know who is worse."

King Isshin grinned unrepentantly at his son as he said, "Someone has to make sure Tensho's future king is actually fit for the crown."

"And how many more times will I actually have to prove to you that your so called sneak attacks have long ago ceased to be of any use in that regard?"

"Who knows?"

With that, the king lunged forward a final time before his son deftly deflected the attack and sent his father careening towards the wall while Prince Ichigo calmly made his exit.

Upon leaving the throne room, Prince Ichigo made his way down to the training grounds where his closest friends and companions were waiting for him.

"Oi! Over here, Prince Pokey! What took you so long? Did the old geezer give you an earful about how you absolutely must marry Queenie Whatshername?"

Prince Ichigo was not at all surprised at his friend, Renji's, manner of address to him. A few years ago, he had grown weary of his title creating a kind of barrier between him and his closest acquaintances and so had demanded (he was still a prince and so therefore could afford to act like one every once in a while) that in private they were to make no mention or reference to his rank unless it was in jest or some such like. Along with Renji, Prince Ichigo's closest friends were Uryu, Chad, Toshiro, Keigo, Mizuiro and Shuhei. They had all pretty much grown up together and so considered each other as brothers.

Ichigo responded to Renji's inquiry with, "What does it matter to you what I discussed with my father? My marriage doesn't really affect you at all to my way of thinking."

Keigo piped up at that moment crying out incredulously, "Doesn't affect us? Doesn't affect us? Why of course it affects us! Your marriage will probably affect us more than it will you!"

Ichigo's face took on a skeptical expression as he said, "If I choose to get married, than I am the one who will make the decision and I am the one who will get married, so how does it affect you?"

"Because then you won't be the same anymore. You won't have the same freedom and time to spend with us like you used to and I don't think I could bear it! What if that Queenie person turns out to be an old hag who just wants to marry you for your money and lands? It would break my heart to see you shackled down in such a sham of a marriage!"

Everyone, including Chad, rolled their eyes at Keigo's melodramatic speech that could likely have been heard in the country of Rikka before Ichigo said, "First of all, of course my life would be different because I would have a wife to consider, but that doesn't mean my personality will change overnight."

Uryu mumbled, "One can only hope it wouldn't because you would likely become even more antisocial than usual."

Ichigo ignored Uryu's comment as he continued, "Secondly, Queen Orihime is not some old hag. She's only a year younger than myself and has already been a queen for three years."

Toshiro grinned as he said, "Then she is probably a lot more mature than you if she's already ruling over Rikka."

Before Ichigo could say anything, Uryu cut in asking, "Not to be rude or anything, but there is only one question that I feel really needs to be answered right now. Ichigo, are you going to marry Queen Inoue?"

Ichigo ran a hand through his hair as he answered slowly, "I'm giving the idea a lot of thought and I am strongly considering taking the queen as my wife, but something about this whole thing is bothering me. My father thinks that the queen has no knowledge of these proceedings and that her advisor, Sir Aizen, I think, is arranging this marriage and setting the stipulations. Why?"

Keigo piped up again, "Maybe she's an ugly young girl who he can't force upon anyone else. Ow!"

Keigo ruefully rubbed his arm where Renji had punched and Renji said, "Maybe you could get to know her first before you accept."

Ichigo asked, "And how exactly would I do that? My father said that he and the other countries set up a date for them all to get together and sign the agreement papers for their alliance in a week's time. I'm sure I need to give my answer in at most two days, not near enough time to travel to Rikka and get to know Queen Orihime properly. I might as well just go into this blind."

Shuhei spoke up, "I don't think you have to."

At everyone's blank looks, Shuhei continued, "You're right in that there is not really enough time to travel to Rikka and get to know the queen since she will likely be busy with matters of state and not really have any time to entertain unexpected and uninvited guests. However, it is not too late to send an emissary out to each of the kingdoms and propose to hold a ball in celebration of the nations' alliance the day before the proceedings. This way, you could spend up to an entire day in the queen's company in a rather comfortable setting and get to know her a little bit before you make your final decision."

Ichigo nodded thoughtfully as he said, "That actually does sound completely plausible. The next time I see my father, I'll propose the idea. Also, father has been considering planning a ball to present Yuzu and Karin to society, so this would really kill two birds with one stone."

The eight young men talked, joked and sparred with each other for the next four hours before they finally had to break up in order to get ready for the evening meal. Ichigo left the training ground feeling a lot more hopeful for the future than he had been earlier that morning.


	3. How they met

Transforming Love: Part 3

"Announcing Queen Orihime Inoue, Princess Rukia Inoue, Princess Tatsuki Inoue, Princess Nemu Inoue, Princess Isane Inoue, Princess Momo Inoue, Princess Chizuru Inoue, Princess Yachiru Inoue, Sir Sosuke Aizen and Sir Kenpachi Zaraki of the Kingdom of Rikka."

Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, the young queen waited at the top of the absolutely enormous set of stairs until the Master of Ceremonies had finished introducing herself and her entire party to the rest of the gathered guests of King Isshin before she began to descend into their midst. She wasn't quite as intimidated as she might have been had the king not decided to have his ball become a masquerade and so she would be able to hide behind her mask for a time until she got used to everything.

By no means was Orihime unused to parties and such, but this trip to the Kingdom of Tensho was the first time she had ever traveled outside of her own country so this whole experience was rather unnerving. She had been prepared to travel to Tensho for the signing of the alliance agreement, but when the invitation to attend a ball the night before had arrived she had been completely thrown off balance. While balls and other such gatherings were often termed as 'pleasurable' and 'leisurely', for those of high rank and position, such events could be seen as opportunities to scrutinize each other whether to root out friend from foe, to find possible allies and even scout out marriage partners for their families. Since she was a young, unmarried queen and this was her first time entering the larger royal society contained within Society of Souls Sir Aizen had warned her that she would be the most intriguing and asked about person there. Whether that would be a good or a bad thing was yet to be determined. So far, she had managed to walk down the stairs without doing anything wrong…but her heart sank when she realized the evening had only just begun.

Rukia's voice reached Orihime's ear, "Just take things one step at a time. We're right behind you."

The double meaning of Rukia's encouraging words were not lost on Orihime and she wished desperately that she could turn around and see her sisters smiling at her encouragingly or to reach behind her and grasp Rukia's steady hand for support. However, for appearance's sake along, Orihime kept her eyes forward and her head as erect as was possible as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Despite the fact that everyone was wearing very concealing facial masks, it was not hard to pick out King Isshin and his entourage so Orihime walked forward and gave her most elegant bow and heard sounds behind her which informed her that her sisters and escorts had done the same.

A large, strong hand entered her line of vision and a deep yet energetic voice said, "Queen Orihime, it is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."

Accepting the proffered hand, Orihime rose to her feet and tilted her head back slightly in order to make eye contact with the taller king as she said, "Your Majesty, I am honored to make your acquaintance as well. On behalf of my family and escorts, thank you for your kind invitation and on behalf of my country, thank you for your cooperation."

Instead of waving away Orihime's gratitude, King Isshin took up Orihime's right hand gently as he said, "You are every bit as gracious, beautiful and good-natured as your father, the late King Naruhito, may his soul be in peace, described in his letters. He and I were rather close friends for years."

Orihime's eyes widened slightly in pleasant surprise behind her mask as she said, "I do remember my father talking about a friend he had corresponded with since before my mother died. It was you?"

The king bent over her hand and gave it a polite kiss before he replied, "You are correct and I would be delighted to have many long talks about your father and mother while you remain here in my home. Let me introduce you to my family. My daughters have been most anxious to meet you."

The last comment took Orihime a little by surprise, but she smiled and nodded as she allowed King Isshin to escort her over to where the king's entourage had been standing patiently and quietly throughout the entire conversation.

"Queen Orihime, may I present my daughters, Princess Karin and Princess Yuzu."

As they exchanged curtsies, Orihime politely studied the two young ladies. In her estimation, both girls were between fourteen and fifteen years of age, which would make them about the same age as Yachiru. The girl Orihime guessed to be Karin was wearing a lilac colored dress that was simple in style and yet flattered her nicely because of its simplicity. The mask she wore was a deeper shade of purple and was also sparsely adorned and helped to accentuate the dark shade of her hair and eyes. The girl Orihime guessed to be Yuzu wore a dress almost as bright and sparkling as her light brown eyes. Golden yellow shades mixed together with a pale rose pink across the dress and reminded one of the fresh colors of spring. Yuzu's mask had a border of pearls and was a grass green color to further the image of flowers blooming.

"This is my son, the Crown Prince Ichigo and his companions, Sir Renji, Sir Toshiro, Lord Shuhei, Baron Mizuiro, Sir Chad, Sir Keigo and Count Uryu."

While his companions gave her polite bows, the prince stepped forward, gently grasped her hand and bowed over it as he bowed deeply and she curtsied just as politely. When she looked up again, she was able to observe the prince had very strong looking features and his powerful frame was enhanced by the black and red suit he wore with a white cape. His mask was white with red stripes and drew her eyes to where she could see a pair of dark brown eyes gazed back at her politely. So entranced was she by the prince's eyes that she barely noticed the rather bright orange hair that hung slightly over the top of his mask.

She suddenly noticed that the prince was looking at her expectantly and her face began to burn as she realized that he had probably asked her a question and so she asked, "I'm sorry could you repeat that?"

The prince's mouth quirked up the smallest bit at the corners as he asked again, "Might I have the honor and pleasure of being your personal escort this evening? My companions would also like me to ask if they might share your sisters' company as well this evening."

Introductions were made all around and in the end Prince Ichigo lead Queen Orihime away while everyone else followed. Sir Renji had offered his arm to Princess Rukia, Sir Toshiro was escorting Princess Momo, Sir Chad had nonverbally asked to accompany Princess Tatsuki, Count Uryu was standing formally next to Princess Nemu, Lord Shuhei had taken the blushing Princess Isane's hand, Baron Mizuiro gently placed Princess Chizuru's hand through his arm and Sir Keigo was chatting amicably and animatedly with Princess Yachiru. Upon observing her sisters were all comfortable with their companions for the evening, Queen Orihime's face seemed to glow in pleasure as she turned her attention back to her own royal attendant.

It was at this point that Prince Ichigo really took notice of his partner's demeanor and appearance. Queen Orihime was clad in a deep golden gown, modestly cut so that only her collarbone and graceful neck were showing and yet flattering in style as to simply accentuate her feminine figure. Scattered across the skirt and bodice were sky blue flowers which matched her necklace, earrings and tiara, which were gold and adorned with the same blue flowers. Her mask seemed to shimmer when the light hit it just right and a single blue flower peeked out on the right side of the mask.

While he had always been told that he made the worst small talk, Prince Ichigo decided to give it a shot and so said, "You have a lot of sisters."

The moment the words exited his mouth he wanted to kick himself for being so stupid. It was a blunt and completely obvious statement and even he had to admit that it sounded extremely lame. Queen Orihime's response took him completely by surprise.

With a barely suppressed giggle she said, "I suppose so. It is very fortunate that you have so many friends willing to be our escorts."

Before they could carry on the conversation, the signal to commence proceeding to the dining hall was given and after finding their appointed seats, Orihime sat down in high spirits for the upcoming meal. The entire affair lasted close to three hours with course after course of delectable food being presented for the guests' pleasure. She was seated next to Prince Ichigo with her sisters and their escorts nearby, so the conversations flowed easily. The highlight of the meal in Orihime's opinion was when the final course of dessert was presented in the shape of a map of Society of Souls with the countries of Tensho, Rikka, Zenbonzakura and Shihoin represented by their national emblems cut out of various fruits and nuts. It was a kind of cake and Orihime had never seen anything so stunning and from the thunderous applause, she assumed that the other guests felt the same way.

When the meal finally came to a close, a set of double doors leading to the ballroom were opened and the guests began meandering in that direction so that the servants could begin clearing away the meal. The dancing would not commence for another half hour or so, giving everyone a chance to relax and digest before the festivities began. Just in case anyone found their appetite again or became overly exhausted from all the exercise, there were tables of various refreshments spread out at the other end of the hall.

Upon entered the ballroom, Yachiru not so quietly lamented, "Why can't we start the dancing now? I'm just itching to have a good dance and see if you are as good a dancer as you claim to be, Sir Keigo."

Mizuiro looked somewhat interested at the comment as he asked, "Were you really, Keigo? How could you lie to such an innocent young girl in an attempt to save your own dignity at the expense of her personal safety?"

At the ladies confused glances, Mizuiro cut over Keigo's noises of indignation and surprise by saying, "The last lady Sir Keigo danced with, I am very sad to say, was very nearly lost to us forever by his carelessness."

Clutching his arm a little more tightly, Chizuru asked Mizuiro, "What happened?"

Closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose ruefully, the baron continued in a melancholy tone, "Oh, the poor young woman never saw it coming. We were dancing a reel as it was during a harvest festival that Prince Ichigo and the rest of us chose to attend. Towards the end of the dance, Keigo decided he would try to pull off a stunt he had seen one of the other men do earlier which was to link arms with his partner, spin around in two circles and then do some sort of complicated twisting of the arms so that in the end the girl had done two quick twirls before they wound up together again for the next set of steps. Needless to say, our good friend Keigo is not nimble of feet, hands or mind and so his attempt went disastrously wrong. Before we knew what had happened, the girl went flying off the dance floor and collided with a table of refreshments. As her head very nearly collided with the end of the table…well you can imagine her and our fright. Once it was established that no real damage beyond a couple of scrapes and bruises had befallen the young lady, the rest of us bemoaned the loss of the punch which had ruined the dress of the girl who wore it and lamented that fact most heartily to everyone especially our extremely mortified friend Keigo."

Silence pervaded over the company for a few moments before Princess Yachiru barely suppressed a giggle and they all began laughing, except for poor Keigo. Finally, Orihime took pity on him, walked over and gently laid a hand on his arm.

"I am sorry. That whole experience must be a rather painful memory."

Keigo looked grateful and was about to respond when Shuhei spoke up, "Oh it was rather painful since the girl's father and brother found out. Only they heard the story wrong and thought that he had done something more…sinister to the girl. They came at him with fists flying and I think the girl's grandma hobbled over and attacked with her cane as well. Eventually, Uryu was able to calm them down and explain exactly what happened, but ever since then we've made sure to give that area a wide berth when we can."

Before anyone could say anything else, the sound of the orchestra tuning up caught their attention and Yachiru said, "Finally!"

Grabbing Keigo's arm, she said, "Well, even if Keigo does pull a stunt like that with me, I can only say that it will make this night a whole lot more interesting. It would be such a lark to see all those royal biddies' faces if I were to crash into the table!"

With that, the girl all but dragged the flabbergasted young man onto the dance floor. As the rest of them made their way in a more dignified manner, Queen Orihime looked apologetically at the prince of Tensho.

"I do apologize for Yachiru's behavior. She can be immensely impulsive and quite often has been scolded by her tutors and mentors to stop being so uncouth and abrupt in her comments."

Once again, Orihime was surprised when the prince's mouth seemed to soften as he replied, "On the contrary, I was just thinking how immensely she resembled both of my sisters."

At Orihime's confused look, he continued, "Karin and Yuzu are twins and yet their personalities are just as different as their appearance. Yuzu is very lively and extremely outgoing, while Karin is rather reserved and sometimes borderline aloof in her manner but does not have any qualms with sharing her opinions rather bluntly when necessary. I was just struck by how Yachiru seems to combine Yuzu's bubbly personality with Karin's blunt comments. One would think the two character traits would contradict one another, but your sister blends them together in a rather interesting way."

Orihime nodded as she replied, "I see your point. While we all love her dearly, my sisters and I do wish Yachiru could demonstrate a little more discretion in her choice of words, but sometimes I do feel as if we are asking the sun not to shine when we do so. And so, if a man ever approaches me for permission to marry Yachiru, I can at least rest a little easier knowing that he will have already seen all of her many qualities and the few flaws that she has to offer."

Ichigo's face had looked somewhat surprised at the last statement before he caught himself and said quietly, "I keep forgetting that despite the fact that I am a little older than you, in terms of station you are more prestigious than I as you are the queen over Rikka. You are allowed to choose your marriage partner and those for your sisters if you so desired, whereas I and my sisters must gain permission from our father."

Orihime's face fell slightly as the words full meaning hit her and she said softly, "Again, you are correct. I am the ruler over Rikka and so such decisions do fall to me as a result. However, I would give just about anything in the world in order to have my father back. Not that I believe myself incapable of ruling over my people since I have my sisters and other trusted advisors to help me when I need it, but I miss my father's wisdom and calm assurance when it comes to making more difficult decisions. I have not even started to consider marriage for myself or my sisters, but we are of the age where such a matter should be carefully contemplated."

For the second time that night, Ichigo desperately wanted to kick himself for being so tactless. In the past, he had never really cared about young women and their opinion of him since he never thought their opinion of any consequence even if he and the young woman were of equal social standing or not. Besides his sisters, in his opinion all the young women he had come across were vain, cloying, overly-sweet and downright annoying in their attempts to sabotage each other in order to catch any 'worthwhile' young man's attention. Orihime had not once tried to make him jealous by flirting with the other young men at the table and neither had she fawned all over him the entire night, but had engaged in conversation with everyone she possibly could. She had not tried to keep everyone's attention on herself and while she would once in a while point out her some of her sisters' good qualities, she did not seem to be at all interested in playing 'matchmaker' with him, his friends or her sisters. The idea of getting to know the young queen and her sisters was not at all a wearisome thought and if the reactions of his friends were any indication, they wouldn't mind either.

Before Ichigo could apologize for bringing up such painful memories, Orihime's face brightened as a sudden thought struck her and she said, "Well, I don't think I'll have to worry about finding a husband for myself anytime soon since this is the first time I've ever been at such a large ball and people don't really know who I am and my sisters are in the same situation."

Ichigo blinked in confusion until he remembered that his father had told him that Orihime had likely not had any knowledge of the tentative marriage agreement. He barely refrained from scratching the back of his head in his usual gesture of trying to think quickly as he wondered how in the world he was going to explain that whole situation to her. What was he going to do? He couldn't really propose to her right now since she had only just met him and would probably say so and he didn't think that coming right out and telling her about the marriage arrangement would be at all appropriate either. This whole idea might be more trouble than it was worth.

At that moment, the music for the first dance began and Ichigo automatically started following the steps and guiding his partner around the floor. After a time, he began to really pay attention to his partner once again and was struck by how beautiful and graceful she really was. Her eyes sparkled behind the mask as she looked around the room at the other couples and her mouth widened in delight as she observed her sisters having a wonderful time dancing as well. The glow from the lights around the room seemed to catch her hair at just the right angles so that one moment the color seemed to be that of flames while a second later the light would give it a hue similar to melted rose gold. He had seen many beautiful women in his life, but none of them were nearly as stunning as the young woman he now, for all intents and purposes, held in his arms.

It wasn't long before Orihime turned her attention back to her partner and began conversing with him about different things as the dance went on and Ichigo did his best to focus on what she was saying. All too soon the dance ended, and Ichigo realized that he had now fulfilled his obligation to her as he had been her partner for the first dance, but now it would be some time before propriety would allow him to seek her out for another dance.

A deep voice suddenly came from behind him and asked, "Your Majesty, may I have the pleasure of the next dance with you?"

Turning around, Ichigo found himself face to face with a tall, dark haired man who had entered with the rest of Queen Orihime's retinue. Her response was to give him a small nod in ascent and give Ichigo a sweet smile before she placed her small hand in the man's long-fingered one. As they walked away, Ichigo followed their progress before he finally tore his eyes away and started looking around for Keigo in the hopes that the young man's constant chatter might help Ichigo to clear his head for a while.

As Orihime prepared herself for the next dance with Sir Aizen, a moment before the music started, she stole a glance over her shoulder to see where the prince had gone and saw him striding purposefully away from the dance floor. Before she could ponder why he would do so rather than seek out another dance partner, the music began again and Sir Aizen smoothly led her through the steps.

Sir Aizen began by asking, "Have you been enjoying yourself, Your Grace?"

Orihime smiled as she said, "Very much so. Everyone has been so kind."

Nodding his head, he said, "That's good. May I ask you what you think of Prince Ichigo?"

Orihime looked up at Sir Aizen with a perplexed expression as she repeated, "What do I think of the prince? Well, I've only just met him, but he seems to be a very good and kind person. He doesn't talk a whole lot, but he is very intelligent."

"Do you think he is handsome?"

With a blush that was fortunately covered mostly by the mask, Orihime asked, "What do you mean? I can't really be a good judge of his appearance since we have been wearing masks all evening and I certainly have not been staring at him all evening to determine just how strong and well-built his body is."

Sir Aizen's mouth quirked upwards at the corners as he decided to let the matter rest and instead said, "Forgive me. I had quite forgotten that this was your first time meeting him. As I watched you two, I was struck by just how comfortable you were with one another. If I didn't know any better, I would say the prince was quite smitten with you and might propose to you this very night if I didn't know for a fact that he is not at all the romantic that his father, King Isshin, was. Why, if the stories are at all accurate, when King Isshin first met the Lady Masaki, he feel instantly in love with her and only put off proposing to her for a day because his father demanded he wait. Fortunately for him, Lady Masaki agreed wholeheartedly. I can't imagine the Prince Ichigo being so impulsive."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Sir Aizen looked at her with a rather blank expression as he said lightly, "Oh, no reason."

For the next minute or so, neither one talked and Orihime was given time to consider Sir Aizen's words. In the past few months, Sir Aizen had been dropping many hints about her being of marriageable age and how she should start considering looking for a husband. Over the years, Orihime and her sisters had often fantasized about the man they would marry one day, what their wedding dress would look like, how many children they would have and all other manner of things young girls dream about as they look forward to the mysteries of the future. A few times, Sir Aizen had mentioned that the citizens of Rikka sometimes wished that she would consent to marry him, all though he himself protested that he had no desire to force her to marry him against her wishes. While Orihime was in no way opposed to finding a marriage partner, she knew that she wanted time to find someone whom she could spend the rest of her life with as a truly married couple who saw each other as 'help-meets' rather than two people who merely spoke vows to each other for propriety's sake. She wanted a marriage in the truest sense of the word and so desired to have the time to find someone who shared her opinion.

Turning her gaze to where Prince Ichigo stood idly listening to his friend Sir Keigo and her own sister, Yachiru, chatter away, Orihime wondered what it would be like if that young man were to approach her tomorrow to ask for her hand. What would she say? When she searched her heart, she found herself attracted to him and wanting to know him better, but was that a strong and valid enough reason to marry him? Evidently, it had worked for his parents, but her intuition told her that while such a brief connection could lead to something more intimate in the future, for now she should be content to let things slowly and naturally unfold.

In the months to come, Orihime would look back and wonder what would have happened between her and Ichigo if they had been allowed to get to know each other in a slow and natural way.


	4. Orihime's troubles begin

Transforming Love: Part 4

Despite having a splitting headache and fairly blurry vision, Orihime was able to tell that the ceiling was cracked. That couldn't be right. She had fallen asleep after the ball and remembered thinking just how nice it was to have bed curtains that were made of silk so that while one could still be allowed to sleep in the morning, the fairly thin material would allow a bit of sunlight to seep through. Now she was staring at a cracked ceiling and her previously comfortable bed now felt more like a hard table or surface of some sort. What was going on?

Gingerly turning her head so that she could better observe her surroundings, Orihime found herself at a complete loss for words. The place looked like a dungeon of some sort only with shelves, bookcases, glass bottles, musty books and other assorted paraphernalia that rather made her think of a mad scientist's lab and a torture chamber mixed into one. She was so stunned that for a time she didn't even notice that her sisters were in a far worse predicament than herself.

"Orihime? Hey, are you awake Orihime?"

The sound of Tatsuki's frantic whisper, snapped Orihime out of her stupor as she fought to focus her gaze and find where the voice had come from as she whispered back, "Yes, I'm awake. Are you all right? Are we the only ones here? What is going on?"

Tatsuki let out a soft and rather humorless laugh as she said, "I can answer all but your last question. I'm about as good as can be expected under these circumstances and unfortunately whoever brought us here decided it would be best to have all the Inoue sisters accounted for, so everyone's all here."

Before Orihime could ask, Tatsuki went on, "I don't see Sir Aizen or Sir Kenpachi anywhere and this room is pretty small, so either they are being held somewhere else or whoever kidnapped us is only interested in us girls. What I would like to know is how they got us all out of the castle without anyone noticing and without us waking up when they were transporting us. This is all way too strange and I don't like it."

As Tatsuki had been talking, Orihime had tried to sit up and move around, but whenever she tried she felt light-headed and nauseous so she simply remained lying down and attempted so maneuver herself in order to see her sisters. She finally managed to adjust herself so that she was lying on her left side and was able to look at where her sisters were being held. While Orihime had been stretched out on a table, she could see Tatsuki kneeling in a kind of cage while the other girls were curled up in similar cages as well.

Any further investigations were halted when a large wooden door was suddenly unlocked and opened, admitting a tall man whose gaze froze Orihime to the core in trepidation of what was going to happen next. While she didn't know exactly what was in store for her and her sisters, the calculating and borderline sinister look in the man's almost golden eyes did not bode well for any of them. Despite that fact, Orihime oftentimes had had to act more in control and powerful than she truly felt when dealing with matters of state in Rikka and so she forced herself to swallow the bile rising up in her throat as she sat up and spoke in the most commanding tone she could muster.

"Who are you and why are you treating us in this way? I am Queen Orihime Inoue of Rikka and I demand to know why I suddenly find myself being held against my will and my sisters are being treated like animals!"

Instead of answering, the man simply gave Orihime an extremely condescending smile and slowly walked towards the bookshelves. He began to rummage through the books, scanning the pages of some and then tossing them away when he didn't seem to find what he was looking for. Even though she was scared and felt sick to her stomach, the man's actions fueled Orihime's anger and so she focused on that emotion to help steady herself as she continued in her tirade.

"I asked you a question! It is quite evident that you are no gentleman or man of honor or you wouldn't be treating my family in such a manner, but that certainly does not excuse your rude behavior! Answer my question! Why have you kidnapped us and brought us here? I don't know what you hope to gain by this, but let me tell you…what is so funny?"

The man's eyebrows had raised, the corners of his mouth curled up in a half-sneer and his eyes had begun to gleam in amusement as Orihime had been talking and this time he deigned to answer in a very irritating tone, "I was told that you could be quite naïve at times, but this is just too much. You do realize that you are not really in any position to be giving me orders, right?"

Before Orihime could open her mouth, the man raised his hand and said, "And I am quite sure that we are far enough away from the castle of Tensho to ensure that no one will find you for quite some time, if at all. To be perfectly honest, my orders were only to make sure that you were absent from the signing of the alliance agreement, but I felt that bringing your sisters along as well to my little hideout would be a better method of dissuading you from trying to escape. Besides, I was just thinking to myself the other day that it would be nice to have some human test subjects for my newest invention and here I have seven of the most healthy and pretty…hmmm, how shall I put it…unexpected guests I could possibly hope for, whom I am sure would have no objection to helping me in my scientific discoveries."

Looking into his eyes, Orihime could see that this man would simply look on her with amusement and contempt if she attempted to plead or beg for him to set her sisters free. Not that she had had any intention of doing so anyways, because his speech had only increased her fury tenfold, and so she opted for speaking in her lowest tone in the most threatening manner she could.

"If you so much as harm-"

She was interrupted when the man suddenly moved over to the table on which she was lying and pinned her arms above her head. When she opened her mouth to cry out, he poured some sort of bitter tasting liquid into her mouth, hooked his thumb under her chin and plugged her nose with his other fingers, successfully shutting off all her airways.

"Swallow," he ordered in a flat tone and Orihime unwillingly complied.

As soon as the liquid made its way down her throat an excruciating burning feeling set in. It was like the itchy feeling one's throat feels during a cold only the pain was increased about fifty times over. Orihime's throat burned with every breath she took and when she tried to cry out in pain, no sound escaped her lips except a kind of choking noise which only caused her throat to burn all the more.

Up until this point, Tatsuki had been too shocked by everything to know how to react, but as soon as she saw Orihime being tortured by this man, Tatsuki began shaking the bars of her cage and yelling at him, "You leave her alone! Leave her alone or I swear when I get out of this cage I'll bash your face in! Leave her alone!"

Tatsuki's shouts somehow managed to rouse a few of the other Inoue girls including Rukia, Momo and Nemu. Their dazed expressions were quickly replaced by ones of fear and concern as they took in their surroundings and what was going on.

Momo was the first one to clamber up and press her face against the bars of her cage in order to further harangue their captor by asking, "What did you do to Orihime? What do you think you're doing?"

Carelessly shrugging his shoulders, the man turned away from the writhing Orihime and began thumbing through his collection of books once again as he said, "Just trying out a certain concoction that I just developed. Looks like it worked perfectly, now all that remains to be seen is how long it actually lasts."

Rukia demanded, "What did you give her?"

Without looking up, the man replied in a flippant tone, "Oh, nothing much. It was some sort of silencing elixir that I remembered reading in a book a few years ago when I was first starting out at a scientist and alchemist."

He looked at Rukia from under his eyebrows for a moment as he continued, "However, what I gave to your sister should be the least of your worries right now since you can't be sure what I have in store for the rest of you."

If he had expected either Rukia or Tatsuki to be cowed by his sinister behavior, he immediately found out the Inoue sisters were made of sterner stuff than he had anticipated. They gave full vent to their fury as they verbally berated his intelligence, his lack of honor for attacking not only their sister but obviously someone who was in no position to defend herself and mostly his audacity for kidnapping them. As for Rukia and Tatsuki, if they had expected their insults to have any effect on their captor, they quickly discovered that verbal abuse did not disturb him in the slightest.

The man had continued flipping through books and finally he seemed to have found what he was looking for as his eyes and face lit up as he said, "Here it is."

As soon as they saw his face take on that expression, the Inoue sisters looked at one another in apprehension since they all felt that his discovery could not bode well for them. They watched him in silence as he in a more energetic manner than before went about collecting what looked like ingredients for whatever he was creating. The entire process took about half an hour, but it felt like an eternity to the nearly panicked girls.

During this entire scene, Orihime had managed to recover from the initial pain from whatever the man had given her, even though her throat still felt raw and tender whenever she took a breath. Her head and stomach had also begun to feel less woozy and queasy so that she risked raising herself up on her elbows so that she could better see what was going on.

The silence was finally broken when the man spoke up, "It is finished. Now, to test it."

Carrying a few bottles in his hands, the man made his way to Chizuru, Yachiru and Isane, who were still unconscious. As he opened the door of Yachiru's cage, Nemu spoke for the first time.

"You had better be giving us poison, otherwise, I personally will not rest until I am sure that you pay for whatever you do to us with your potions."

The man looked at Nemu and smiled in his slightly sinister way again as he replied, "That might be quite interesting. However, you might actually want to wait to see what this potion does before you start assuming you will be able to exact your revenge on me."

With that, he forced Yachiru's mouth open and poured the liquid down her throat. Tilting her head back, even in her senseless state Yachiru was able to swallow the potion. For a few moments nothing happened and then suddenly Yachiru began to moan and very soon to wail in pain. It wasn't long before the man had administered the potion to the other two unconscious girls while their sisters were only able to look on in horror and helpless rage.

When he stepped in front on Nemu's cage, he looked down at her for a moment before he handed her a bottle and said, "Drink."

Nemu looked into his eyes for a few minutes before she opened the bottle and drank the contents. Rukia and Tatsuki immediately began berating her and demanding to know why she would do something so stupid.

Nemu calmly handed the bottle back to the man as she answered, "I drank because I would rather suffer the same fate as my sisters rather than…fight this man alone."

Momo asked in a choked voice, "But what if it really is poison? Or maybe it wasn't but we won't be able to escape now?"

Nemu looked at her and said, "It's not poison and I promise that we will get out of here."

The man chuckled as he said, "I wouldn't promise that to her if I were you, but you are certainly a girl of good sense. The rest of you should follow her example."

Two minutes later, all seven of her sisters were writhing on the ground in pain and while she could only helplessly watch the man was sitting at a table taking notes. For the moment, he seemed to have forgotten Orihime and so she took this time to surreptitiously feel around for any sort of weapon she could use either to free her sisters, attack their captor or possibly both. Eventually, her hand grasped what felt like a stout rod and so she held it against the edge of the table so that it couldn't be seen from where the man was sitting.

Orihime jumped when the man suddenly said, "At last. It's working."

When she looked at her sisters, Orihime was not entirely sure what was going on and for a few minutes she could only stare in dumb confusion. Her sisters seemed to be shrinking and growing feathers all over the place. They were turning into swans. Yet how was that even possible?

The man began muttering to himself saying, "I knew it. The elixir for human to animal transfiguration was not completely impossible. This is incredible."

With his back turned to her, Orihime decided that this was her chance. Forcing her head to remain clear and alert, Orihime pushed herself off the table, gripped the wooden rod firmly between her hands and swung it at the back of the man's head. Unfortunately, the man had heard her and so began to turn around and as a result Orihime's blow landed on his face. He was stunned and crumpled to the floor moaning, but Orihime did not spare him a second thought as she rushed over the cages and proceeded to open them.

By this time, her sisters had completely turned into swans and they didn't seem to be entirely aware of what was going on. Looking back at the man, she saw that he was slowly coming around and so she desperately ran for the door, flung it open, raced back and began trying to herd her sisters towards the open door. After a few moments of confusion, the newly transformed Inoue sisters seemed to catch on, flapped their wings experimentally and swiftly made their way out of the room.

As soon as she was sure that her sisters had escaped, Orihime leaned against the rod and began to slowly follow them. In her relief over her sisters, she had forgotten that their captor was quickly coming to his senses and so she was completely taken by surprise when she felt a pair of strong hands encircle her own arms.

"Your sisters are of no concern to me now. My work with them is all but finished and I can easily find them again, but you are a different matter, Your Highness. Unfortunately, you will not be able to join your sisters ever again."

Terror and anger helped to give Orihime enough strength to push back against her captor and send them both crashing into a large cabinet full of glass vials which shattered all over both of them. The moment the man's grip loosened slightly, Orihime wrenched herself away from him, ignored her own injuries and stumbled towards the door.

Careening around like a drunkard, Orihime somehow managed to make her way through the winding hallway and finally out into the night. Later, Orihime would wonder how in the world she had managed to escape when she had not been at all aware of her surroundings, but her instincts seemed to have kicked and helped her make her way to relative safety.

When she first breathed in the fresh air, Orihime felt her head clear once again and she looked up gratefully to the moon and stars floating in the sky. Opening her eyes, she saw seven swans circling above her and they seemed to be waiting for her. Remembering that they were not out of danger just yet, Orihime looked up to make sure that her swan sisters could see and follow her and took off into the night as fast as her legs could carry her.

**Author's Note:**

This part is completely and totally stupid, so I am thinking that I might redo it sometime in the near future, but for now it will have to do since I want to keep this story moving and I have no idea how to fix this to make it better (any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!). If you know anything about the story of The Six Swans, you'll understand that until I have Orihime's sisters change into swans I can't really do anything else and I did want Ichigo and Orihime to meet before that happened but to have their relationship cut short because of this traumatic event. We'll discover in the next part that Ichigo has no idea what happened to Orihime and her sisters and he will be very worried. Also, Aizen's behavior and questions during the ball will become a little clearer, if everything works out the way I planned.

If anything does not make sense, feel free to leave a comment and I will try to explain things a little better than they were here.


	5. The search begins

Transforming Love: Part 5

Ichigo was startled awake a little after dawn by a loud banging on his bedroom door. He was about to inquire who is was when he heard several raised voices and recognized Renji and King Isshin's voices trying to calm another man who kept shouting louder and louder. As he got up and made his way to the door, more voices were added to the din which included the rest of his friends and a few guards.

Just before he opened the door Ichigo thought ruefully to himself, I'm going to regret opening this door.

The cacophony of sound increased five times over the moment Ichigo fully opened his door and is usually the case, none of it was even remotely coherent. Everyone was trying to raise their voices a decibel louder than the person standing next to them in an attempt to make their own point heard better and then the other person would retaliate with an even louder volume and so on. If Ichigo had been quicker, he would have been able to slam the door, crawl back into bed and stuff several pillows over his head in an attempt to block out even a small portion of the noise. Unfortunately for him, the man who had begun banging on Ichigo's door was Sir Kenpachi Zaraki and the moment Ichigo began to turn around, the bigger man grabbed Ichigo's arm, spun him around and began shouting in his face.

It shouldn't have been possible, but Ichigo was able to clearly Sir Kenpachi over the din say in a booming voice, "Queen Orihime and her sisters are missing!"

Before Ichigo could even process this information, Ichigo's father grabbed his other arm and yanked him over in order to yell, "Have you heard? This is absolutely terrible! There is no sign of them anywhere!"

In true Keigo fashion in reacting to any sort of crisis, his greeting to Ichigo consisted of throwing himself at the prince of Tensho and all but screeching at the top of his lungs, "Ichigo! Who could have done such a dastardly deed to those innocent young maidens? Ichigo, I'm so distraught!"

Sir Kenpachi dragged Ichigo back over to his side and yelled in his face again, "What are you going to do about this? I say we find out who's responsible and you let me deal with those lowlifes!"

It was all too much to process for Ichigo and he was about ready to scream in frustration when suddenly he and everyone else around him were forced to cover their ears and cringe as the sound of a loud and extremely off-key blast from a pair of trumpets drowned out anything else. Thankfully, the trumpets only lasted for a few moments before they ceased and blessed silence reigned over everyone.

Ichigo was not at all surprised to hear Uryu's calm and rather condescending tone speak to the crowd as he said, "As concerned as we all are for the welfare of the queen's safety as well as of her sisters, panicking at this crucial point will only waste precious time. I hope you will forgive my impudence, Your Majesty, in calling everyone to order."

King Isshin had become more business-like during Uryu's little speech, and so smoothly said, "Not at all, my dear boy, since you are absolutely correct that all this chaos is doing nothing to help the Inoue family. We need to organize search parties and get underway without further delay."

"Pardon me, King Isshin, but why should we organize search parties when we are not even sure why Queen Orihime disappeared in the first place? Shouldn't we investigate whether she left of her own free will or not first?"

Ichigo turned his head to look at the speaker and saw a tall, elegant man with a very composed and proud countenance. Despite the fact that Ichigo had not met the man before the previous night when they had both been wearing masks, because of his dark hair, equally dark eyes and entire deportment, Ichigo knew that the speaker was King Byakuya Kuchiki from the kingdom of Zenbonzakura.

One of his greatest gifts or flaws (depending on how you looked at it) was the ability to speak exactly what was on his mind and Ichigo demonstrated this ability when he retorted with, "Are you serious? You seriously think we should waste time trying to find out why the queen is gone rather than where she is right now? She and her sisters could be in danger and if we wait any longer it might be too late to save them."

As Ichigo had been giving his heated opinion, King Byakuya had been gazing at him with a look of cool composure and then said, "Yes, I am sure that everyone here is very concerned about her safety, myself included. However, am I the only one who finds it strange that the queen should disappear the day we are supposed to sign the alliance agreement with her sisters and all of their belongings?"

Ichigo blinked and was about to ask for an explanation when King Isshin said, "You are correct, King Byakuya, in that this entire situation must be investigated thoroughly. However, I am in agreement with my son that no time should be lost in finding the Inoue family and so I will have my son organize search parties while a number of us here in the castle investigate possible reasons behind this perplexing occurrence."

Within the hour, Ichigo was riding out of the castle grounds leading a group of five men while seven other groups headed off in different directions. Ichigo's group consisted of Sir Aizen, Toshiro, Renji and two guards. For some reason, as they were riding out and beginning to look for signs of where the Inoue sisters might have gone, Ichigo surreptitiously glanced over at Sir Aizen. The man had not said a word this whole time and his face was completely unreadable. Either sir Aizen was really good at hiding his emotions, he was too shocked to know how to react or maybe a combination of both.

Thinking back to the previous night, after he had finished his first dance with the young queen, Sir Aizen had asked to dance with her next and while he had tried to force his mind on to other things, Ichigo's thoughts and eyes had frequently strayed to where the two were dancing. He couldn't help but observe that they had been having a fairly serious conversation and whatever it had been about, once the dance was finished and for the rest of the night Queen Orihime had been in a very reflective mood. So lost had she been in her thoughts that more than once if someone wished to speak with her, they had been forced to all but shake her back to her senses. The queen had been over-apologetic about her behavior, but eventually everyone had decided to leave her to her thoughts. He had kept his distance from her until the very end of the night when he inquired about dancing with her one last time before he escorted her to her suite. She had blushed deeply and accepted and Ichigo could tell that she was very flustered, so he had decided to let her be. When he had escorted her to her chambers, before he had left, Ichigo noticed that she seemed to be on the verge of saying something until she suddenly lost her nerve, said a hasty but polite good-night and gone into her room. That was the last time he had seen her and now Ichigo wondered if whatever Sir Aizen had been talking about with Orihime, her flustered behavior afterwards and her sudden disappearance were somehow related.

After a few hours of vain searching, Ichigo called for a brief halt beside a small river in order to refresh their horses. He had been considering asking to talk to Sir Aizen in private, when suddenly he turned around from checking his horse's saddle and saw the same man standing right behind him with a look of determination on his face.

"May I speak to you in private, Prince Ichigo?"

Ichigo nodded and walked a short way down the river before turning and giving Sir Aizen a look of expectancy.

Sir Aizen returned Ichigo's gaze for a few moments before he turned to face the river and began with, "I can't help feeling that I am partly to blame for this."

Out of all the things Ichigo had possibly considered Sir Aizen to say, this was certainly not one of them. Not knowing how to respond, Ichigo simply waited a few moments for the man to continue.

"You know about Queen Orihime's recent history, I believe, and so you know that she acquired the throne before most of us considered her to be ready. As a result, I believe it will not be news to you that I have been one of her most active advisors these past few years. The queen is a true ruler and does her best, but there are certain things that I have taken upon myself to handle so as not to overburden our young and very dear queen."

Rubbing between his eyes, Sir Aizen went on, "You are probably wondering what the point of all this is and I am coming to that right now. One of the affairs I have most recently begun to look into, much to my regret, was finding an appropriate husband for Queen Orihime. You are most certainly aware of the fact that all the negotiations for this alliance agreement were done through me and I am the one who first proposed a betrothal between you and the queen. I did this without Queen Orihime's knowledge and consent and I am coming to realize the full consequences of that decision.

"You see, for a time I had rather hoped that the queen might consider me as a possible life-partner since the concept of sharing power and ruling over Rikka together was basically what we had done the past few years. However, I am not one to force my affections where they are not thoroughly welcomed and so I took it upon myself to seek out a worthy candidate for the queen instead. While I am not her father and am not related to her in any way, I do feel responsibility for her and wish to see her well taken care of. After careful consideration, I finally decided upon you since you seemed the most worthy, but I wanted to make sure that things were set in motion before the queen arrived and so I added that clause in the last message about you agreeing to marry Queen Orihime."

Lifting up his hands to ward off the anticipated protest, Sir Aizen said, "I realize my mistake and believe me when I say that I never meant things to get so out of hand. My intention was to introduce you two and to see how well you two got along, reveal the possible engagement to the queen and gauge her reaction. If she was favorable to the match, then I would let things progress accordingly. If she expressed any doubts, than I would go before you and your father, explain the situation and release you from the promise of marriage while still allowing the queen to sign the alliance agreement. Believe me when I say that I had no idea that the queen might react in this manner since she is not one prone to rash and hasty decisions. And for her to disappear with her sisters as well without Sir Kenpachi or myself having any knowledge of the affair, is extremely unnerving, I must say."

Unable to come up with anything else to say, Ichigo asked, "So last night, while you were dancing with her, you explained about the engagement to me?"

Sir Aizen nodded and said, "When it comes to matter of state and the future of Rikka, the queen is most eager to make those decisions. However, when it comes to matters of her own heart and future, the queen does not always see the need to think carefully but quickly. Another reason I decided to try and secure an engagement with you is that it would guarantee the safety of Rikka as the countries would be joined together through the strongest bonds imaginable when these invaders from Hueco Mundo come. As a member of a royal family, you know and understand that almost every decision you make almost always effects more than just yourself. With every choice, one of royal heritage must always take into account how it will affect the welfare of the country."

Ichigo still had many doubts and concerns, all of which revolved around the person they had been discussing, but Ichigo decided to keep them to himself for the time being and simply said, "I understand. We'd better get moving again."

As the group set out again, Ichigo was given time to consider what Sir Aizen had told him and while some of it did make sense, certain points bothered him immensely. Despite the queen's obvious youth and slight naiveté, he remembered that Orihime had discussed finding marriage partners not only for her sisters but for herself as well. So why would Aizen think that it was necessary to arrange a marriage for her behind her back? Also, despite the fact that now Orihime's shyness after her discussion with Aizen had been explained and he could see how she might not know how to react at first, it had sounded to him like Aizen strongly believed that she had run away. In fact, if what he understood about the luggage being missing was correct, than most of the evidence certainly pointed towards the conclusion of Orihime and her sisters taking off in the night, but Ichigo didn't believe it. Not only did Orihime not strike him as the kind of person who would just run away in panic, but if they had run away with their entire luggage, they would have needed horses and none were missing. If they had procured horses from someone else, tracking them would have been much easier. However, since no signal had been heard from any of the other groups, Ichigo knew that no sign of them had been found as of yet. Lastly, Ichigo knew that Orihime would never have run away if it meant leaving her people in peril as she had surely done since the alliance agreement had not been signed yet. Sir Aizen had said himself that Orihime considered her peoples' wellbeing of more importance than her own and so Ichigo knew that she never would have left of her own free will at this point.

It didn't make sense.

**Author's Note:**

Once again, after fighting and fighting with this part and struggling with my own doubts as to its ability to properly contribute to this story, I finally decided to leave it as is and see if I can work with it from here.

Just so everyone understands, Aizen is bad (I'm not entirely sure of his motive just yet, but I will figure it out soon...) and I hope I am making that clear. Also, I have to figure out how to properly utilize Kenpachi (I'm starting to wonder why I brought him in the first place...but now that he is there, he will do something of importance...I just have to figure out what).

I'm trying to keep everyone in character and to let this story make sense, but if I am not doing a good job, feel free to let me know. All comments either of praise or criticism are both equally accepted, so don't be afraid to point out my failings, PLEASE!

Thank you all!

**Author's Note:**

Added Feb. 27

You know, I really should re-read by stuff before I just post it. TykkiMikk on pointed out to me that I wrote Kenpachi yelling at Ichigo in a panicked voice and I had completely forgotten that I had actually done that. I AM SORRY, you were right, I thought I changed the word from 'panicked' to 'booming', but apparently I had not.


	6. Friendly discovery

Transforming Love: Part 6

"Well, well, well. What a pleasant surprise."

Orihime jerked awake at the sound of the voice coming from above her. Her heart raced a mile a minute and her limbs flailed about as she instinctively tried to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

"Whoa, whoa, there's no need to be frightened. Are you all right?"

Orihime had been trying to quickly rub the sleep out of her eyes and take a good look at her discoverer. She had about three seconds to notice that the speaker was male with a striped headband tied around his head before he was suddenly attacked by white missiles. Hisses of fury and yelps of pain went on for half a minute as Orihime attempted to crawl out of the hole at the base of a tree that she had found the previous night and had barely made it inside and collapsed on the ground before she fell into a dead sleep.

When she was finally able to stand up and take in the scene unfolding in front of her, it took Orihime a few moments to actually process what was going on. Seven swans were pecking and nipping at a man who was rolling and flopping around, trying to get away from the furious, fowl onslaught. After a time, Orihime remembered that the swans were her sisters and that they had evidently attacked someone whom they considered to be a potential threat to her. While she did appreciate her swan sisters defending her, Orihime felt that the man was not dangerous and so proceeded to try and help him out of his predicament. She began by approaching and gently grabbing two of the nearest swans (her heart sank a little as she thought about how they all looked pretty much identical and so she would not be able to know who was who) and tried to nonverbally communicate to them through her expressions, gestures and soft stroking of their feathers that she felt they could trust the man. Somehow, the two swans understood her message and made a few squeaky honks that seemed to tell the other swans to stop attacking the man.

As the swans backed away from him and gathered complacently around Orihime, the man looked at Orihime gratefully and said, "Well now, it seems like you have some very fierce and loyal protectors there. How in the world did you acquire such amazing creatures?"

Orihime had knelt to silently thank her sisters as the man spoke and when she heard his last sentence, she nearly broke down as the memories of what had transpired the previous evening and how she had failed to protect her sisters crashed over her again. Tears threatened to spill over as she gazed at her transformed sisters.

"Is something wrong? Do you feel ill? Are you hurt?"

Looking up into the man's face, Orihime saw that he was looking at her with a worried expression and now she could get a better look at him. He was fairly tall with straw colored hair sticking out from underneath his green and white striped head-cloth. His gray eyes were lined with smile wrinkles, all though, at this point, they were gazing at Orihime with concern. When she looked into the man's eyes, Orihime's intuition told her that beyond a doubt he was trustworthy and honorable.

In response to the man's questions, Orihime shook her head and mutely gestured to her throat indicating that she couldn't speak.

The man seemed to understand and replied, "I see. Well, even though that is a bit of a hurdle to get over, it looks like you are able to understand me and so we will be able to find some way of figuring out who you are and how to get you back home."

At this statement, Orihime's spirits lifted for a brief moment before a feeling of caution took over. With things the way they were now, Orihime had no idea who that man who had kidnapped them the previous night had been or who he had been working for. Obviously, there is no way he could have pulled off such a feat on his own and so Orihime supposed that there was some mastermind behind it all. The question remaining was who?

Looking at the man again, Orihime knew that while he was trustworthy and would likely be of great help to her if he knew who she was, there was no telling what might happen to him if he got involved with her problems. Her sisters had already become collateral damage to this unknown person and Orihime would rather throw her own life away rather than have one more person harmed by this mastermind.

As she was coming to this resolution, the man extended his hand to help her to stand and he said, "By the way, my name is Kisuke Urahara. Now the only problem remaining to be solved is to figure out what my family and I should call you."

Orihime thought for a few moments before she thought that telling the man her first name only couldn't really give too much away and so bent over to write her name on the ground and indicated to Kisuke that it was her name.

Kisuke's face lit up in a smile as he said, "Well now, that certainly makes things a lot less complicated now that I know you can write your name at least. Can you read and write?"

Orihime nodded and Kisuke said, "You certainly are a wonderfully strange girl Miss Orihime. Anyway, my house is not far from here if you and your companions wish to join me."

Once again, Orihime nodded her consent and proceeded to follow Kisuke a short way through the forest until they came to a slightly open part of the forest. In front of them stood a good sized log cabin where two almost teenage children were hanging up large sheets on a clothesline. As Kisuke raised his hand in greeting, a rather tall, dark-skinned woman stepped out of the front door as she returned Kisuke's wave.

One of the kids had shockingly red hair and he called out, "Hey Kisuke! What's with the Goose Girl?"

Orihime was rather startled at the statement until she looked behind her and saw to her amazement her sister swans were walking in a straight, single-file line in her wake. When the thought struck her that she must look like Mother Goose leading her young goslings, a full smile lit up her face.

When they reached the house, a round of introductions was given by Kisuke. Along with the three who had been outside the house, inside there were five others. The tall woman Kisuke introduced as being his wife, Yoruichi, while the two children were Jinta and Ururu, whom they had not officially adopted but looked after as if they were their own. Next Kisuke pointed to a short statured woman with short, dark hair standing slightly behind Yoruichi and said she was Yoruichi's long-time friend, Soi Fon. A tall, burly man emerged from what Orihime could only assume was the kitchen area as he was wearing a full apron stained with what looked like flour and meat grease was presented as Tessai. Sitting at a table were three of Kisuke's friends who had come over for a visit and their names were Shinji, Hiyori and Hachi.

The moment Kisuke finished his introductions, Yoruichi forcefully took charge of the situation and said, "Now that I have gotten a good look at you, Orihime, I can tell you are in need of a good meal and a place to stay. Am I right?"

Unable to think of anything else to do, Orihime nodded dumbly and Yoruichi said, "I thought so. I will brook no arguments whatsoever, all though, if I had to guess and not to be rude but I think you are not really in any condition to fight with me anyhow. At least not verbally, that is."

At everyone else's confused glances, Kisuke spoke up, "Yes, unfortunately, Miss Orihime does not seem to be able to speak, but she is intelligent and can read and write, so there is no need to treat her any differently. She obviously will be staying with us for a while and so we will have to come up with some form of communication, but we'll take care of that soon enough."

Jinta spoke up, "What about her ducks? I'm not taking care of those things!"

At Junta's questions, Orihime automatically looked behind her and saw that her swan sisters had not come into the house with her, but were apparently waiting outside.

Yoruichi cuffed Jinta on the back of his head and said, "You be polite. If I say you are going to take care of those ducks, then you are going to take care of those ducks. No complaints."

Kisuke put his two cents in by adding, "They are swans, not ducks. Try to remember the difference."

Jinta crossed his arms and said defiantly, "I don't care if they're flying pigs! I won't take care of-"

He was interrupted when another man emerged from another part of the house saying, "Swans you say? What kind of swans? I've wanted to do some research on this regions fowl life, but as far as I know we don't have any swans. A discovery of this nature could be quite interesting."

As the man made his way outside, Orihime fought to keep her body from trembling too violently. He had been rather tall with a kind of mask covering his face, but there had been holes cut out for his eyes and the sight of those eyes had frozen Orihime in terror. The golden eyes.

Noticing Orihime's distress, Kisuke was about to ask her what was the matter when the sound of a commotion outside caused everyone to rush to the door. Orihime was the first to react since she was the only one who knew exactly what, or more accurately who, had caused her swan sisters to panic. She was not at all surprised to see the masked man being attacked by the frightened swans, but her next actions did surprise her greatly. Running over to the struggling mass of bodies, for the second time that day, Orihime proceeded to try and pacify her sisters.

In the doorway, everyone else looked on in astonishment as they tried to figure out what was going on. Kisuke was the first to recover and he went over to help the fallen man to his feet.

Despite the fact that Orihime had managed to stop her swan sisters from attacking the masked man, she could still feel their agitation and fear directed towards him and Orihime herself could barely muster enough courage to look up into his masked face.

Fortunately, Kisuke seemed to understand what was going on and whispered something in the man's ear. At first, he had furiously resisted, but in the end the masked man reluctantly relented and pulled the clothe mask from his head. Immediately, Orihime could see that he was not the same man who had transformed her sisters the previous night and that they simply shared the same eye color. Her sisters noticed the difference as well and they were once again calm.

Seeing that the situation was under control, Kisuke called back to his wife, "Yoruichi, I think a good soothing bath should be first on the list, then a nice long nap and finally a filling meal tonight. Jinta, Ururu, would you please prepare the guest room for Miss Orihime and allow these fine swans to rest there in the meantime?"

Walking over, Kisuke once again helped Orihime to her feet and said softly, "I only want you to tell me as much as you are comfortable with, Miss Orihime, but if you wouldn't mind telling us your story tonight after dinner, I believe I can safely speak for everyone present that we will be more than happy to help you in any way we can."

Orihime nodded and after that her mind went blank for a time. When she finally came to her senses, she was lying on a bed that could almost rival her own magnificent one back home in terms of comfort, but it was the feeling of having her sisters surrounding her that really set her mind at ease. After a few moments of quiet reflection, Orihime decided that she really should explain why the man with the golden eyes had frightened her and her sisters so, but couldn't figure out how to do so without revealing exactly what he had done to them and possibly even why he might have.

Looking at her sleeping, swan sisters, Orihime was reminded about how everyone seemed to think they were real swans and so maybe she would only have to reveal what the man had done to her. Before she could come to a final decision, Orihime heard Yoruichi yell at the others to say dinner was ready and then order Ururu to kindly go and ask their guest if she would like to join them.

Orihime's stomach growled at the thought of food and she could swear she smelled mouth-watering biscuits being set on the table at that very moment. Quickly making her way to the door, Orihime thought to herself that she would worry about the details of her narrative after dinner. Right now, there were far more pressing matters that needed to be attended too.

**Author's Note:**

Phew! Writing fairy tales and having it all make sense is a lot harder than I originally thought! I am really hoping that everything is making sense so far, but just in case, here's a little explanation for what just happened.

The man with the golden eyes whom Orihime just met was Mayuri Kurotsuchi and as a result that means that the man who gave Tatsuki, Rukia and the others the potion that transformed them was Szayel. For the sake of this story, I am going to take a slight liberty and say that the two men have the same colored eyes in this story. I do have another character or two who will be introduced later on and will be used since they can kind of be mistaken for other characters (if you know the story of Swan Lake, you can kind of see where I'm going with this...mistaken identities are so much fun to mess with!).

Hopefully, everything will tie in nicely at the end and I do have what I believe to be a 'killer' ending...it's just going to figure out how to make things develop in such a way that the ending actually seems believable and completely makes sense.

As always, if you have any questions about things that I didn't explain well or if I just didn't write it well enough, DON'T HESITATE to ask or tell me!

Enjoy!


	7. Unexpected discovery

Transforming Love: Part 7

At the conclusion of the meal, Yoruichi voiced what they had all been thinking when she said, "Another excellent dinner, Tessai. The chicken was especially tasty."

Tessai inclined his head humbly in acknowledgment of the praise as he said, "Thank you, ma'am."

"Yes, Tessai," agreed Kisuke, "this meal was so scrumptious, it even drew Mayuri away from his lab for once. I can't remember the last time Mayuri actually deigned to eat with us."

"Tch," Mayuri scoffed, "That just goes to show how much you know. And just to refresh your self-glorified and all too egotistical brain of yours, Kisuke, the last time I came and ate with you was exactly 10 months, 15 days, 2 hours and some odd minutes ago when you somehow tricked me into celebrating my own birthday."

Yoruichi leaned over and whispered to Orihime, "That rather like the pot calling the kettle black in terms of arrogantly displayed intelligence, if you ask me," to which Orihime barely managed to suppress a smile.  
>"Ah yes," Kisuke grinned unapologetically, "now I remember. That was quite an interesting night."<p>

Mayuri crossed his arms and said, "With all that ridiculous celebrating, my experiment on the D to L elixir was almost completely ruined. I barely made it back in time to mix the ingredients together when they were at their most potent."

The next moment, Mayuri's entire demeanor changed as he rested his elbows on the table, folded his hands in front of the lower part of his face, looked directly at Orihime and said, "Now, I will come exactly to the point of why I wished to join the dinner party tonight and that was to get our young guest more used to my presence after the fiasco that happened earlier this afternoon."

Before Mayuri could continue, Kisuke cut in saying, "I know that you are interested in asking our guest more about her swans and that you wish to run some tests and catalogue information about them, but I am telling you right now, Mayuri, if she refuses to let you examine her fowl friends then you are not to go anywhere near them. Is that understood?"

Waving a hand carelessly in Kisuke's direction in what everyone could only assume was a sign of acknowledgment, Mayuri focused his intense, golden gaze upon Orihime in expectation. A few moments of awkward silence followed while Mayuri stared at Orihime and Orihime tried to return his gaze.

Finally, Yoruichi spoke up asking, "Do you have to stare at the poor girl like she is an experimental treasure trove just waiting to be dissected and inspected?"

Mayuri sighed deeply before he responded with, "I was allowing the girl time to ask me about what kind of experiments I would do so that she could make sure that her precious pets would not be in any way harmed, which they would not be by the way, since that is apparently one of the first rules of being polite in common society."

Yoruichi rolled her eyes as she said, "Apparently, your brain was scrambled by all those hits from swan beaks this afternoon, otherwise, you would have remembered that while our friend here can read and write, she does not have the power of speech."

At this last statement, Mayuri's eyes took on a slight gleam of interest as he asked, "When you say 'she does not have the power of speech', do you mean that she has somehow forgotten how to speak, that she has lost her voice or that she is a mute?"

Yoruichi opened her mouth to reply before she closed it and looked at her husband questioningly, who replied, "I am not entirely sure myself since I told Miss Orihime that she could share as many or as few details about her life as she felt comfortable with after we had finished our meal."

Mayuri stood up proclaiming, "But this changes everything! Not only are her swans scientifically interesting, but this very girl is just fraught with possibilities as well! I can even take her down to the lab with me since I don't have to worry about her incessant female chatter distracting me from my work!"

"Now hold on just a minute, Mayuri."

During Mayuri's speech, Orihime had been so stunned she had had no idea how to react. For some reason, she had believed that Kisuke or Yoruichi would say something in her defense, but to her surprise, it was Shinji who halted Mayuri's excited tirade.

Shinji gave Mayuri a pointed look as he rested his cheek on his hand and said, "You seem to be forgetting the most important point here. Call me deaf and dumb, but I have yet to hear Miss Orihime actually agree to all of your schemes here, so don't go putting the cart before the horse. Why don't you try asking the young lady for permission first before you go making all of these plans?"

Mayuri rolled his eyes and asked quickly, "Would you mind letting me ask you a few questions about your condition and running a few minor tests to see if it can possibly be remedied?"

He waited a few moments before turning to give Shinji a superior look and said, "There. I asked her. Now, let's go down to the lab."

Before anyone could protest, Mayuri walked over, grabbed Orihime's arm and proceeded to firmly, yet not hurtfully, lead her out of the room. Orihime heard sounds of Yoruichi gathering her senses and most likely her fury as well, but Orihime turned around and gave Yoruichi a look that said she was fine with this whole thing. Even though he had not waited for her response, Orihime had just been about to agree to Mayuri's inquiry since she was also curious to see whether or not he could do something about her voiceless condition.

Mayuri led Orihime to a door at the far end of the hallway and when he opened it, Orihime saw a flight of steps that descended down into what looked like a cross between a cellar and a kind of dungeon. Memories of the previous evening and being trapped in a similar kind of room and she froze at the top of the stairs. While Mayuri was impatient to begin his examination, he did notice Orihime's trepidation and so turned around to call for Kisuke, hoping that the more mellow man could help calm Orihime's fears, but as it turned out, Kisuke had followed them with every intention of overseeing the procedure.

Without having to be asked, Kisuke stepped forward and took Orihime's hand saying, "Here, Miss Orihime. Let me help you down the stairs. Even though Mayuri has all but staked his claim on the laboratory, the truth is that I myself do some tinkering around down here as well with different gizmos and gadgets."

Under his breath, Mayuri muttered behind them, "Which is basically just code for 'junk'."

Ignoring the jibe, Kisuke continued, "As soon as we get down there, I'll be sure and light a few extra candles and maybe get a fire going in the grate so we can have some more light and it won't be quite so dreary down there."

When they arrived at the bottom of the stairs, Orihime saw that it opened up into a much bigger room than she had anticipated and it was absolutely cluttered with test tubes, cauldrons, books, vials with various plant-life, what looked like powders and other more mysterious substances along with all sorts of other scientific paraphernalia. The room had a rather high ceiling at about 10 feet from the ground and the breadth of the room was probably about 30 feet by 35 feet. Along the walls, Orihime saw that there were several other doors and she vaguely wondered where the other doors might lead when she suddenly saw something that made her heart stop and her blood run cold.

Feeling Orihime begin to tremble violently, Kisuke looked at her with growing concern and asked, "What's wrong?"

Orihime somehow managed to raise a shaking finger to point to a set of tables about 15 feet from where they were standing that was absolutely covered with human body parts. Hands, feet, arms, legs, torsos, what looked like fingers and toes and most cringe worthy of all, brains, eyes, and heads were strewn about all over and Orihime was not entirely sure why she hadn't managed to faint just yet.

Seeing where her finger was pointing, Kisuke's mouth fell open, then he clamped it shut, opened it again, shut it again before he finally managed to say, "Ah, I know that must look really bad, but it's really not what you think it is."

Orihime gave him a positively bewildered expression and Kisuke said, "Well, it is kind of what it looks like, but…ah…let me show you."

Walking over to the table, Kisuke picked up a few of the body parts and brought them back over to where Orihime was still standing and he said, "Here, try touching them."

Orihime looked at him with an expression that clearly said he had to be out of his mind for even thinking she would ever touch something like that, to which Kisuke responded with, "My explanation will make a lot more sense if you touch these first."

Very carefully, Orihime held out her hand and allowed Kisuke to place one of the hands he had brought over into her own. The moment the hand touched her skin, Orihime was tempted to drop it and run out of the room until she noticed that something was off about the hand. Out of curiosity, Orihime began poking and prodding at the hand until she discovered that it was not an actual hand. The skin felt rather rubber like and while there were some bone like things in the object, it was obvious that they were not bones since she could turn the fingers into unnatural positions. Looking back to the table, Orihime now understood why she hadn't naturally felt the need to faint. There was no blood. If these were actual body parts, even if the bodies had been cut up like normal cadavers, there still would have been blood splatters all over the tables. Also, the room would likely have smelled a lot worse with the rotting human parts.

Seeing the color return to Orihime's face, Kisuke explained, "I have been trying to create a perfect replica of the human body. I'm calling it a 'gegai' and as you can see, most of the parts look pretty convincing, but they can still use some work."

Hearing a snorted laugh behind them, Orihime and Kisuke turned as Mayuri scoffed, "Oh yeah. Those things look really realistic. And they are so very practical. Such an invention will definitely benefit the people. Just think of it. Wives can buy a gegai of their husbands so they can actually beat them over the heads for the stupid things they do. Armies can buy them so that combat practice can be much more realistic. These gegais are most certainly going to be very useful to mankind."

Kisuke's patience seemed to have reached its limit as he retorted, "Well, excuse me, but I don't see how your D to L elixir is going to be any more useful. Why do you even feel the need to use letters when the name you're giving simply says what it does?"

Before Mayuri could respond, Yoruichi's voice floated down from the top of the stairs saying, "You two had better stop bickering like little girls and get to work before I come down there and make you two knock it off."

Kisuke called up the stairs to his wife, "Oh, no need to worry about us, my dear. We'll be done in no time."

Turning his attention back to Mayuri, Kisuke said, "We probably should hurry this along since I'm sure Miss Orihime is rather tired."

Mayuri's response was to roll his eyes, mumble about the audacity of people thinking they could rush perfection and clear off a space on one of the tables for Orihime to be able to sit down where there was plenty of light. At Mayuri's curt, nonverbal request for her to sit down, Orihime complied and waited patiently for him to begin.

Without looking at her, Mayuri asked as he was cleaning off a magnifying glass, "So, I do have to know if this mute condition of yours is something that you have had most of your life or if it happened within the last year or so?"

Orihime thought about trying to mouth her response and use really big gestures to get her point across, when she felt two objects suddenly placed in her hands. Looking down, she realized that she was holding some paper and a charcoal pencil. Raising her eyes, Orihime's gaze met Kisuke's and he indicated with his head that she should use them. Giving him a grateful look, Orihime proceeded to write out the response 'I lost my voice fairly recently.'

Sparing a quick glance in order to read Orihime's response, Mayuri went on preparing his medical instruments as he asked, "How recently did you lose your voice?"

Orihime hesitated for a moment before she remembered that she had resolved to tell these people the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but the truth nonetheless and so she wrote 'Yesterday.'

Mayuri's eyes widened very slightly when he read the answer before he looked at Orihime with forced patience and said, "Are you serious? You only just lost your voice yesterday? This is probably just a case of laryngitis or something. What a waste of time."

As Mayuri had been speaking, Orihime had felt her heart drop as she felt the man lose all interest in finding out if he could help her. A split second after despair crashed over her, it was driven away just as quickly as it came when she felt a strong hand push her from behind and send her flailing towards the ground. Automatically, her mouth opened and she tried to let out a cry of alarm, but not a sound escaped her lips as she saw the ground rush up to meet her. The moment before she knew she would hit the ground, Orihime felt a pair of arms grab her, her outstretched arms about a millimeter away from impact. Turning her head to see who her rescuer was, she was surprised to see it was Mayuri who had saved her.

Instead of looking at her, Mayuri was borderline glaring at Kisuke as he asked, "What was that all about? Are you trying to bring out a feeling of empathy from me or something since you forced me to act as this girl's savior? Despite the fact that I did as you anticipated and prevented her from falling, it does not change a thing."

Kisuke turned his gaze instead to Orihime as he said, "Forgive me for that. I couldn't think of any other method I could use in order to rekindle Mayuri's interest. When it comes to the human body, there is no better expert for figuring out what might be wrong with you than Mayuri. I am more of an inventor, though I do have a more than passing knowledge of maladies and remedies for the human physiology."

While he had been speaking, Kisuke had relieved Mayuri of Orihime's weight and had helped her to sit back in her place and once he had finished Mayuri said, "Your little game proved nothing, Kisuke."

"I beg to differ. Tell me, Mayuri, you know that Miss Orihime had no knowledge of what I planned when I pushed her off the table. A person's natural reaction to such stimulus would be to cry out in panic. Now, if Miss Orihime had a simple case of laryngitis, we would have heard some sort of noise come from her. Correct me if I'm wrong, but despite the fact that I know I saw her mouth opened in a state of shock, not a single sound reached my ears. Yesterday, if what I gather is correct, Miss Orihime could speak as clearly as anyone here and yet today she is completely incapable of making even the slightest sound. What do you think?"

Mayuri's only response was to turn to Orihime and say, "Open your mouth."

Orihime complied and for the next few minutes Mayuri proceeded to inspect her mouth, feel her throat (Kisuke had to remind him to ask permission first) and ask her to do a couple of things like swallow before he finally said, "It looks like everything is in order. Everything functions as it should despite the fact that she can't seem to make a sound. What could have happened?"

Orihime considered for a moment before she thought, 'What could it hurt?' and began to write a fairly brief description of how she had drunk something that felt like it burned her throat.

Kisuke looked at her and said, "If I had to guess, you didn't voluntarily or knowingly drink something like that on purpose, but details aside, that does help somewhat. Mayuri, do you have any idea what could have caused this and if we can reverse it?"

Mayuri shook his head and said, "I can run some tests, but I doubt there is much I can do since I have no clue what she was given. Maybe I can find the source if I take a sample of blood, however, I would say only time will tell if this girl will ever regain her voice again."

After asking permission, Mayuri did take a small sample of blood and placed it into several different vials. As he was working, no one had noticed seven, small, silent figures making their way into the laboratory until several of them flew onto the table and one into Orihime's lap.

Kisuke grinned as he commented, "Looks like these little ones are more than a little bit attached to you, Miss Orihime. They can't seem to bear being away from you for too long."

Mayuri looked over at the group and said testily, "Just make sure those creatures don't knock anything over. That's the last thing I need. A bunch of flying fowls running amok down here and bre-"

He suddenly stopped and stared at the swan who had perched in Orihime's lap and who Orihime had been gently stroking. His gaze snapped from one swan to another and back around again before he finally looked Orihime in the eyes and said something that made her heart stop.

"Who exactly are those swans? And how were they transformed?" 

**Author's Note:**

So...I have never really paid much attention to Mayuri's character much since I don't think he is really all that interesting, but I know that I am taking some liberties with his character in here, so just bear with me. Keep in mind that in both Swan Lake and Six Swans that those who were under the transformation spell were able to change back into their true forms...that really is why I brought Mayuri into the picture at all. Kind of a spoiler, but I just wanted to make sure that I let everyone understand that he is kind of critical and kind of not that important to the story.

Anyway, this came together a little quicker than the other parts and while I am still not thrilled with the result, I think the story is finally coming to a satisfactory place where things will, hopefully, come a lot quicker and a lot better.

As always, I hope you are enjoying this journey with me! :)


	8. Verifying suspicions

Transforming Love: Part 8

There was nothing Ichigo hated more than being inactive in a time when action was needed. Except for when he had been forced to give up being active in order to be inactive now. Even more hated was when Ichigo was forced out of doing something active in order to sit and do nothing so that he could listen to others talk about what actions they could take. Up until about an hour or so ago, Ichigo had been out riding with his scouting party, trying to find any trace of where Queen Orihime and her sisters might have gone, only to be called back to the castle by a messenger and now here he was listening to everyone else try to figure out what to do now.

None of the search parties had found a single clue that could point them in the right direction, but to Ichigo's mind that just meant that they should broaden their search. Whether Orihime and her sisters had been kidnapped or had left of their own volition, either way whoever had planned the whole thing had to have known that there would be search parties sent out and so any hiding places where they might stay and rest would be much farther away from the castle than the five mile radius he and the other search parties had covered so far.

Also, because of the absolute nonexistence of any signs of their escape route so far, only hardened Ichigo's belief that they should expand the search. To take such care in covering their tracks had to have been hard work and not necessarily something they could have kept doing the entire trip, so if the search was widened, they were bound to discover something.

"I say we should send a messenger to Shun-Shun castle to see if the young queen and her family have somehow turned up there. If nothing else, there might be some clues at the castle to help us understand whether or not this is a kidnapping or a runaway situation."

"That would take up too much time. My greatest concern is the signing of the alliance agreement. We came here to sign the alliance agreement and for that purpose alone, so we should finish exactly what we came here for and then worry about Queen Orihime's vanishing."

"With one of the four signers missing, how do you propose to handle that situation? Are we supposed to cut Rikka out of the agreement entirely or just believe that she had every intention of signing but was prevented by her disappearance?"

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Ichigo tried to keep his temper in check as he listened to the different comments being thrown back and forth at one another. If this is what he was going to have to deal with when he became king, at this point, he was ready to give up his claim to the throne since it would only mean constant headaches from trying to negotiate with people who only wanted their own ideas and theories to be heard and recognized. All this bickering was getting them nowhere and Ichigo was quickly losing his patience.

While his father, King Byakuya and King Omaeda Marechiyo of Shihoin bantered back and forth over which course of action to take, out of the corner of his eye, Ichigo noticed another figure leaning against the wall and looking just as frustrated as Ichigo himself. Like himself, Sir Kenpachi had been forced to return to the castle when no trace had been found of the Inoue royal family and if Ichigo's guess was correct, Sir Kenpachi was of the same mindset that this bickering over the alliance agreement was a complete waste of time. Sir Kenpachi's good eye flicked back and forth between the three speakers, anger and impatience becoming more defined in his expression and two seconds before the knight exploded in anger, Ichigo slid about a foot further away from the man.

"Alliance agreement this, alliance agreement that! You forced me away from searching for my queen in order to listen to you three argue about a stupid piece of paper! Go ahead and yell at each other until you're all blue in the face, but don't expect me to just stand here and do nothing while my queen and princesses whom I have sworn to protect are somewhere out there!"

King Byakuya gave Sir Kenpachi a bored look as he said, "There is no need for such dramatic outbursts. We are all quite concerned for the young queen's welfa-"

"If you're all so concerned," Sir Kenpachi added a lot of sarcastic emphasis to the word, "then why don't you actually do something about it?"

The king of Zenbonzakura had eyes that somehow managed to become even colder than they had been a moment before as he said, "Because we don't have the choice to think only of ourselves. If I were the one who mysteriously disappeared, I would expect something as vital as this alliance agreement to still move forward as planned."

Sir Kenpachi strode forward until he was about a foot from King Byakuya's face as he ground out, "I told you that I could care less about a piece of pa-"

King Byakuya cut him off saying in an icy tone, "It is not just a piece of paper. Allow me to remind you that the safety and future of Rikka is just as dependent on this agreement as the rest of our countries."

"If I may be so bold," came Sir Aizen's from another part of the room.

All eyes turned towards him and so Sir Aizen took that as his cue to continue and said, "If my guess is correct, the problem here is that you all believe that since the queen has disappeared, there is no one left who could sign in her place. Forgive me if I seem a little impetuous, but I have served as Queen Orihime's advisor for the past three years, but am also something of a co-ruler with her. If no one objects, I could sign in place of the young queen for the time being until we manage to find her and then once she has been found we can add her signature to make the agreement all the more binding."

Everyone was silent for a few moments until King Isshin spoke slowly, "I see no objection to such an action. All in favor?"

A few minutes later, the agreement had been signed by representatives from all four countries and Ichigo could only describe the emotion he felt when his father finally gave him permission to continue the search again as relief. Relief that everything had worked out, relief that all the countries had come to an agreement that left no one out, but most of all relief that he could finally get out of that room and do something useful.

As he made his way out of the conference room, Ichigo noticed that Sir Kenpachi was walking next to him and was surprised to see the man looking borderline furious. Ichigo was not one to pry, but in this case, his curiosity simply got the better of him an so he asked Sir Kenpachi to explain what was bothering him. At first, the bigger man did not seem to hear him and so Ichigo had to repeat his question in a louder tone.

This time Sir Kenpachi heard Ichigo and didn't bother looking at the prince as he responded with, "You don't need to know, so just leave it alone."

At this response, Ichigo became slightly irritated and so retorted with, "Hey! You're not the only one concerned about Queen Orihime's safety!"

Sir Kenpachi response was, "You two met yesterday."

Ichigo's irritation became more pronounced as he ground out, "I might have just met her yesterday, but that doesn't mean that my concern for my fiancée isn't legitimate."

The bigger man seemed about ready to make a comment when suddenly he stopped walking and gave Ichigo a confused expression as he asked, "What do you mean 'your fiancée'?"

Ichigo blinked in equal confusion before he said slowly, "Right, you probably weren't told, just like the queen had no idea."

Crossing his arms, Sir Kenpachi growled, "Start talking."

Crossing his arms and looking just as fierce, Ichigo replied, "Even though I don't much care for your tone right now, I guess you do deserve to know what I know if you tell me what has got you so upset."

Sir Kenpachi was silent for a time before he finally closed his eye and nodded, showing his agreement and so Ichigo began, "Last week, my father informed me that we would be signing the alliance agreement with Rikka, Shihoin and Zenbonzakura. At that time, I also found out that in the correspondence between Rikka and my father, Sir Aizen had handled the entire affair and had made the stipulation that Rikka would only sign the agreement if my father was able to find someone eligible to marry Queen Orihime."

Ichigo quickly continued in a louder voice in order to cut off Kenpachi's anticipated outburst saying, "Sir Aizen kept it from the queen until last night when he said he told her about our betrothal. Now I know you have questions and I have some of my own, but we really should go somewhere else."

Shutting his mouth, Kenpachi gave Ichigo another long look before he once again nodded in understanding and followed the prince down to the stables. Neither one of them attempted conversation until they had saddled their horses and were outside the castle walls. Ichigo had considered asking his comrades to join him and Sir Kenpachi, but then thought better of it as he figured that for the time being whatever information or suspicions the knight might have should be kept between the two of them and if anyone else came along Sir Kenpachi might refuse to share information all together. He could always fill in the others at a later time when Ichigo himself had had time to try and figure out what was going on.

Surprisingly they managed to exit the castle without running into any issues with people asking where they might be going or some such like, so Ichigo and Kenpachi rode in silence for a time. After a time, Ichigo's curiosity about what Kenpachi might reveal began to rise, but he wasn't sure if he should wait for Kenpachi to begin speaking or if he himself should initiate the conversation.

The moment these thoughts crossed Ichigo's mind, the decision was made for him when Kenpachi asked, "Are you sure that Aizen confessed to you that he was the one who set up the whole marriage engagement and kept it from Queen Orihime until last night?"

Ichigo nodded saying, "He pulled me aside when we were out searching together as we were letting the horses rest. Just how long has Sir Aizen been a part of Rikka's court?"

"He has been Queen Orihime's advisor for the past three years…I believe he first became a part of the court about four or five years ago. He wasn't someone who was very noticeable until about two months before King Naruhito's death. Up until then, he was just another courtier from an upstanding family, but as far as I know he doesn't have any living relatives and he sold his estate when he became the queen's advisor."

Ichigo decided not to ask the next most obvious question and allowed Kenpachi to continue, "Aizen came to everyone's attention when he saved young Princess Yachiru from being attacked by wild dogs. One day, the young princess had been playing out in the gardens when out of nowhere four wild dogs began chasing her. She managed to run to a nearby tree and clamber far enough up the tree to be out of the reach of the dog's snapping jaws. Aizen was the first person to come to her aid, beating the dogs away from the tree and before too long other arrived and helped to restrain and cage the dogs. Later on, the dogs were released into the woods at Princess Orihime's request, Aizen was knighted for his bravery and slowly Aizen began to integrate himself into the royal family's life."

Kenpachi went on saying, "Two months later and about four days before King Naruhito's death, the king himself asked to speak to me privately. I had been a part of the court for about twelve years, but I had not had much personal contact with the royal family, which is why when King Naruhito implored me to watch over and protect his daughters should anything happen to him I didn't know what to say. When I asked him why he chose me, his response was, 'You are a man of honor and the only man strong enough to take on this task as well as the only one I can trust.' When he said that, I gave him my word that I would do as he asked, though I did ask why he thought something might happen to him. King Naruhito didn't answer, but looking back he must have known something might happen because four days later he never woke up. It appeared as though he had simply passed away in his sleep."

Ichigo asked, "What do you think?"

"It doesn't matter what I think, it only matters what I can prove."

"But you suspect Aizen?"

Kenpachi gave Ichigo a side-long glance and Ichigo said, "As you have pointed out, I only just met Queen Orihime last night, but my father spoke of her and he also corresponded with King Naruhito and there are certain points about this whole affair that just don't seem to add up. From all accounts, Queen Orihime seems to always consider the welfare of others before her own and yet when I talked to Aizen this morning, it seemed to me that he wanted me to believe that the queen had fled because of our engagement."

Nodding in understanding, Kenpachi said, "I would be lying if I said that I always suspected Aizen, but in the past year or so he has been taking on more and more responsibility. Not too long ago, Aizen was seeking to make the queen his wife. Now, with this information about Aizen setting up the engagement, the Inoue's disappearance and Aizen signing the alliance agreement in place of the queen…it certainly is beginning to look like he is slowly but surely taking over control of Rikka."

Ichigo nodded as he said, "I agree. This whole affair has been awfully weird from the very beginning, but until we have more proof we should probably keep it a secret a while longer. At least until we find the Inoue's or know exactly what Aizen is planning. However, I would like to let my friends in on our suspicions since some of them are really good at spying and finding information or evidence we might need."

"What about your father?"

"He still has to deal with Aizen and he is not a good actor."

Kenpachi nodded and for the next few hours, the two men devoted their time to scouring the countryside looking for any sign of the Inoue's.

For six days, Ichigo and other search parties looked everywhere and while any hope they had of finding an actual trail was gone, that didn't mean there might not be some information that could be gathered from surrounding villages or travelers. In order to keep the people from panicking over the disappearance of an entire royal family, all who had knowledge of the incident were sworn to secrecy and the search parties merely inquired as to the whereabouts of a young woman and her companions. Search parties disguised themselves as common folk and claimed to be looking for the young women to inform them that their elderly grandmother was doing poorly, so as to alleviate any suspicion.

In the middle of the afternoon, Ichigo and his search party, who consisted of Keigo, Renji and Shuhei, decided to take a break and allow their horses to rest. They had decided to take a shortcut through the woods in order to arrive at the small village of Benihime and found a river to rest by and water their horses. They were talking amongst themselves, when Ichigo looked up and saw something that made him pause for a moment.

A young woman with dark chestnut hair was wading into the middle of the river and seemed to be trying to fish with her bare hands. From a distance, he couldn't make out her face, but from what he could tell she had a stunning figure and moved with fluidity and grace. However, at the moment, she seemed to be frozen…waiting. He watched her, fascinated, until she finally moved quickly and threw a good sized fish onto the riverbank where he noticed about three swans standing and observing her as well.

Ichigo jumped when Keigo threw his arm around Ichigo's shoulders and exclaimed, "Hey! Aren't you listening to anything I just said? What are you looking at?"

Even though, Ichigo and the others had been talking for quite a while, it seemed as though the young woman had not noticed them until just then, for she jumped and whirled in their direction. Ichigo stood up and took a few steps forward, but before he could say anything, the young woman turned, got out of the river as fast as she could and sped off into the woods.

**Author's Note:**

Ok, this is taking WAY longer than I had anticipated and so I thank you all for your patience in between my posting the chapters. I really will try to get better at finishing them.

A few explanations here are going to be necessary for you to see where I'm going and why I might be doing some things. First of all, the young woman with dark chestnut hair was Orihime. Yes, I am fully aware that her hair is caramel or light brown, but if I were to leave her her alone then despite the fact that Ichigo can be quite dense, he would notice something like that. Remember back in chapter five when Orihime was escaping and all the potions fell on her? My idea is that somehow, her hair was dyed in that incident and so it will help somewhat in concealing her identity. Lame idea, but it was the best I could come up with... Second, I am hoping that Kenpachi and Ichigo's discussion made sense about their suspicions about Aizen and why they are keeping it under wraps for the moment. In order for things to work out like I have planned, they do kind of need to be in cahoots with each other.

Anyway, if anything else is not making sense, please feel free to ask and I'll try to clear things up as best I can. If you find any inconsistencies, errors or the like, I really don't mind when people point them out since I don't always see them myself.

Hope you enjoy!


	9. Unanticipated second meeting

Transforming Love: Part 9

Thinking that it would not be such a good idea to arrive back at the Urahara residence running as if the very Hounds of Hell were after her, Orihime came to a halt and sat down against one of the trees so she could catch her breath.

She should have known that there would be search parties trying to find her, but after a week's time with no sign of pursuit, Orihime had begun to forget about all the dangers she had likely escaped from. Out of all the people she could have run into, it had to be Prince Ichigo. She had known him for less than ten hours before her kidnapping and while she had been initially attracted to him, after careful consideration for the past week she concluded that she knew too little about the prince to know if she could eliminate him, his family or friends from list of people who might have had reason to kidnap and harm her and her sisters.

In many ways, this past week had been one of the hardest she had ever had to endure in her entire twenty-one years. Being kidnapped and forced to watch as your sisters are turned into swans, running for your life, encountering the Urahara's and their friends, being interrogated by Mayuri and having to reveal everything that had happened to her and her sisters, discovering that Mayuri might be able to come up with a counter-elixir that would allow her sisters to return to human form for a short time and then going over and over in her mind who all she knew of who could possibly have a motive for doing all these things to her and her sisters. Kisuke and Yoruichi had also had long conversations with her about everyone she knew in an attempt to help her figure out who might have a motive for doing all of this. Orihime's naturally kind heart was forced to try and see potential evil in every face she had ever known, trusted or even met in her entire life and the strain was sometimes more than she could handle.

Feeling a weight settle in her lap, Orihime looked down to see one of her swan sisters sitting there. Looking into the swan's eyes, Orihime knew from the deep brown color of the eyes that Momo was trying to comfort her. Smiling down at Momo, Orihime gently began stroking the neck feathers trying to communicate that she was grateful for Momo's concern. A few moments later, Chizuru and Isane sat down on either side of Orihime as the young woman sat thinking.

After Mayuri had asked the questions, "Who exactly are those swans? And how were they transformed?", Orihime's first reaction was to ask a question of her own and so when she had recovered enough, she quickly wrote out the question, 'How do you know the swans are human?'

Mayuri had responded with, "I knew it! So they are humans who have been transfigured into swans! I thought human to animal transfiguration was just bunch of hooey, but it actually works!"

It had taken a few minutes before Kisuke had been able to force Mayuri to realize just how awful the situation truly was and reiterated Orihime's question, to which Mayuri had replied, "Their eyes, Kisuke, look at their eyes. This one has violet eyes while that one has emerald green ones. There is nothing you can say that will convince me that these swans are not human."

When Orihime looked for herself, she found that Mayuri was right. All the swans did have different colored eyes and her first recognizable emotion was relief that she could now know which swan was which sister. At that point, Orihime was so overwhelmed that she had almost cried in joy, but when Mayuri carelessly said that he could possibly find a way to counteract the transfiguration elixir, Orihime had actually broken down and sobbed so much that the two men had had to assist her up the stairs so that Yoruichi could help her to bed. After she had been comfortably settled with her sisters surrounding her, Kisuke and Mayuri had been thoroughly scolded for traumatizing their guest. The next morning, it had taken about fifteen minutes before Orihime had finally been able to convince Yoruichi that she had not been mistreated and had simply been overwhelmed and overtired from yesterday's events.

That had been about a week ago and Mayuri was still working on a 'cure', which he said would probably not be potent enough to last for very long at first, but something was better than nothing in Orihime's opinion. Mayuri had told her this morning that the first batch of elixir would be ready tomorrow and Orihime could hardly find enough things to keep her occupied until then.

Deciding that she had recovered enough to make a presentable entrance into the house, Orihime gently lifted Momo out of her lap, got up and made her way to the house with her sisters trailing behind her. Upon entering the house, Yoruichi and Ururu greeted her, informed her that the men were working in the laboratory, to which Orihime nodded in understanding before reaching for her paper and pen and writing that she was sorry, but she had been unable to catch any fish for dinner. Yoruichi nodded in turn, told Orihime not to worry about it and proceeded to make her way to the kitchen to inform Tessai about the change in dinner plans. Orihime followed and after Yoruichi was finished talking with Tessai and left, Orihime mouthed very distinctly 'What can I do' and so Tessai set Orihime to work making the biscuits for dinner and a couple of apple pies for dessert.

A while later, there was a loud knock at the door, which Orihime ignored at first until she heard Yoruichi answer the door and begin talking with someone whose voice she had only heard two times, but was nonetheless very familiar to her ears. She was never able to explain exactly what happened next, but before her brain could understand what was happening, her legs had managed to carry her from the kitchen to the front room where Yoruichi was talking to three young men dressed in commoners clothes, but whom Orihime knew were Prince Ichigo, Lord Shuhei and Sir Renji.

No one noticed her at first and as Orihime came into the room, she heard Yoruichi saying, "I can't say that I have ever seen a young woman of that description, but since I have so much to do here around the house, I don't see too many new faces. My husband goes out for supplies most of the time, so he might have some information."

Prince Ichigo looked resigned as he said, "And I assume your husband is out working. Thank you for your time."

Yoruichi crossed her arms and replied, "Hold on just a minute. If you really need to go then that's fine with me, but my husband happens to work in our basement. I don't think he's really busy at the moment, so if you'll wait a moment I'll go and fetch him."

Respectfully and gratefully, Ichigo inclined his head and said, "I would be most grateful if you would ask him to come up, madam."

Waving her hand dismissively, Yoruichi said, "No trouble at all, but don't call me 'madam' again. My name's just plain Yoruichi, so don't let me catch you calling me 'Ms. Yoruichi' or 'Mrs. Yoruichi', you hear?"

All three men nodded in understanding before Yoruichi smiled in satisfaction and went to fetch her husband.

At this point, Orihime had fully come to her senses and began to wrack her brain for some explanation for why she had come out here in the first place and to figure out some way of leaving without drawing attention to herself. Right now, it didn't seem as though anyone had noticed that she had come in, but that would all change the instant she moved to try and get away.

Looking at the three men, Orihime's eyes were drawn immediately by Prince Ichigo's strong bearing and confidant air. While the men were conversing quietly amongst themselves about something, Orihime once again studied the prince's countenance, only this time she was able to see the entire face rather than just his eyes, jaw and hair. From what she could tell, Prince Ichigo was handsome, with eyes that seemed to exude firm resolve, honesty, strength of character, intelligence and pride, which made Orihime strongly consider striking him from her list of possible suspects. However, she forced herself to remember that she knew very little about this man and that she could very well be overlooking possible character flaws because she was so struck by Prince Ichigo's handsome face and fine figure. Better to let Yoruichi and Kisuke talk to him and judge his character since they wouldn't be emotionally compromised like Orihime might be in this situation. Orihime knew too little about the prince to be in love with him, but she could not deny strong feelings of attraction to Prince Ichigo.

Her musings were suddenly interrupted when the sounds of frightened horses and frantic yells reached her ears from outside in the yard. Upon hearing the commotion, Prince Ichigo and his friends bolted out the door and Orihime followed after them instinctively.

It took her less than an instant to see Sir Keigo trying desperately to calm down four horses, who were bucking and yanking at their bridles which were fastened to a couple of poles, as well as Prince Ichigo and his friends coming to Sir Keigo's assistance. Orihime's attention was captivated in the next moment by the sight of two somethings, or in this case someones, white and feathered trying to get out from underneath the stomping hooves of the horses. Without thinking about the possible consequences, Orihime dashed over to dive under the surging bodies of the horses in order to use her own body as a shield for her sisters. Some sixth sense must have warned the horses that there was a human underneath them for about five seconds later the horses stopped rearing in fright and simply nickered slightly to show they were still a little skittish.

Once the horses were under control, Ichigo saw a figure wriggling out from underneath the horses and clutching two white objects. Immediately guessing what had likely happened, Ichigo's temper flared as he thought about how this person had risked their lives doing something very stupid for no apparent reason.

"What do you think you were doing? The horses could have trampl-Wait, you're the girl from the river! Why did you run…Wait, you're bleeding!"

As Ichigo had been talking, he had stalked over to the hunched over figure, roughly pulled her to her feet, realized that it was the same girl who had run away from him earlier and while he was trying to demand an explanation for her behavior Ichigo noticed the girl had a sizable cut on her forehead that was bleeding quite profusely. This last factor drove out all other matters except finding help for this girl and fast. The rest he would deal with later.

When Orihime had launched herself underneath the horses in order to protect her sisters, she had struck her head on the ground, or more accurately, a rock in the ground, which had resulted in the cut she had now. While the cut itself was not very large or very serious, since head wounds tend to bleed quite a lot she was beginning to feel slightly dizzy from all the blood loss. That did not prevent her from keeping her arms wrapped securely around her sisters as she allowed the prince and his companions to help her back inside the house.

Kisuke and Yoruichi were just emerging from inside the house when they saw Ichigo and Sir Renji all but carrying Orihime to the front door. As Urahara directed the men to settle Orihime in one of the chairs, Yoruichi gently pried the swans, who happened to be Yachiru and Chizuru, from her arms. It took about three minutes for the wound to be cleaned and bandaged and another minute before Tessai brought in a cup of tea to help bring Orihime out of her daze.

As Orihime was slowly sipping her tea, Ichigo saw that she was beginning to recover and so his earlier questions became important once again and so he said very abruptly, "I know you are the girl from the river earlier, so I want to know who you are and why you ran away from us. Also, what possessed you to run underneath those horses? Don't you know you could have been killed?"

When Orihime looked to Kisuke with a questioning look, Ichigo became irritated and said, "You don't need to look to him to supply your replies, just answer my questions girl!"

At Ichigo's outburst, Orihime gave him a surprised and somewhat angry look. In her agitation, Orihime forgot that she could not speak and so opened her mouth, but no sound escaped her lips. For a moment, Ichigo and Orihime just stared at one another before Orihime turned away her eyes in embarrassment with her face coloring and Ichigo looked to Kisuke for an explanation.

Before Ichigo could ask, Kisuke said, "This is my niece and her name is Zhinu. Unfortunately, she does not have the ability to speak, but if you will give me a moment to collect some paper and a pen, she will be able to answer your questions."

With that, Kisuke left and Ichigo turned back to the girl in front of him. Her face was turned and her hair covered part of her face, but it was quite apparent that she was still blushing slightly. After a moment, Ichigo also noticed a small wet spot forming on the front of her smock and Ichigo felt his heart pull a little when he realized that he had caused the tears to fall. In a very uncharacteristic gesture, Ichigo gently took one of the girl's small hands in his own and waited until she turned her face to look at him curiously.

Ichigo's close friends had been stunned when he took the girl's hand, but that was nothing compared to the actual shock of hearing the prince say, "I'm sorry. I spoke to you very harshly simply because you scared me back there, but that still doesn't excuse my behavior. Are you all right?"

Renji, Shuhei, Keigo and his other friends knew their friend well enough to know that he was a man of honor and integrity. If Ichigo felt that he had wronged someone, then he would apologize and try to set things right. Some of them had even been on the receiving end of his apologies, so it was not the fact that Ichigo was apologizing that had them so flabbergasted. It was the tone which he was using that confused them. While it could not be described as 'tender' or 'soft', it was sincere and concerned for someone whom Ichigo had only just met.

Before anyone could say anything else, Urahara returned with the writing materials, handed them to Orihime (or 'Zhinu') and she quickly wrote out the response, 'I'm fine. I ran earlier because you startled me and I thought you might be bandits or something.' It was partially the truth, since for a moment before she recognized the prince and his friends, she had thought that bandits or kidnappers had found her again.

Ichigo grinned as he said, "Well, you're not completely off the mark with that assumption where Keigo and Renji are concerned."

Renji growled, "And what exactly are you trying to imply?"

Keigo protested, "I'm not a bandit! How can you say such an unkind thing about me? She might actually believe you!"

It was Shuhei who managed to calm Keigo down as he said, "I think Ichigo was trying to insinuate that you are bandits whose main source of plunder are the hearts of fair maidens. Some of the most romantic figures in stories and tales are the roguish, suave, dashing and courageous highwaymen or bandits you know."

It took Keigo a moment to process this information before he puffed out his chest a little more and he said smoothly, "Oh is that right? Well, I guess it wouldn't be too bad then to be called a bandit."

Renji rolled his eyes, but smirked at Keigo's utter acceptance of Shuhei's explanation and made no further complaints on the subject. As for everyone else, they were hard pressed keeping their laughter contained so as not to spoil Keigo's simple-minded vanity and pride.

Turning his attention back to Orihime, Ichigo said, "Just one more question and then I'll leave you alone Miss Zhinu. Why were you so desperate to save those ducks? I mean, you really could have been killed or seriously injured because of them."

Orihime looked into Ichigo's eyes for a few moments before she wrote, 'They are swans and I saved them because they are precious to me. My family.'

When Ichigo read this, at first he was not sure how to respond when he grinned and said, "Well, I guess I can understand a little how you feel. I mean, I care for my horse and all and sometimes I wonder if he can actually understand me, but I wouldn't put him on the same level as my family or friends. Those swans must be priceless and very good companions for you to risk your life for them."

Standing up, Ichigo turned to face Kisuke and said, "I'm sorry that we are taking up so much of your time. We came here looking for someone or information about someone whom you might have seen recently. If you could give us any clues, we would be most grateful."

Kisuke nodded and so Ichigo continued, "We're actually looking for a family with eight sisters. You might have seen one of the sisters in town gathering supplies or the group of them travelling by here in the past week or so. The head of the family is a girl named Orihime and she is very beautiful with long caramel colored hair. She has seven sisters whose names are Rukia, Tatsuki, Nemu, Yachiru, Chizuru, Momo, and…ah I always forget her name…"

"Isane," supplied Shuhei.

"Yes, Isane. Has anyone unfamiliar passed by here recently?"

Kisuke crossed his arms and looked thoughtfully into space as he mumbled, "Eight unfamiliar women riding through the woods…possibly stopped in town…beautiful appearances…They all are beautiful, you said?"

Ichigo looked lost for a moment before he managed, "Um…yes, I believe so…"

"Hmmm…eight beautiful women passing by in the last week…all sisters…Wait, a minute. I think I might have…no, no that was the circus and they came a few months ago…very beautiful women, but too exotic looking for my taste and none of them could hold a candle to my dear wife (he added in a rather hasty tone)…also, I don't think they were sisters…goodness…the peddler and his family…no, he only has three daughters…"

Finally, Kisuke leveled his gaze on Ichigo and said, "Nope. I can't say anyone of that description has passed through here. If I may ask, why are you trying to find them?"

Ichigo answered smoothly, "Their grandmother is on the verge of death and the family requested assistance in tracking down the girls in order to bring them home. I wasn't given details as to why or where they were travelling, just that they needed to be found and brought home quickly before it is too late."

Kisuke nodded his head in understanding as he responded, "What a tragedy. If we hear or see anything that might be of use, we'll let you know if you leave us with some information of where you might be found."

Ichigo answered with another pre-arranged response saying, "Any information you might acquire can be sent to the innkeeper of The Green Dragon in Karakura Village. The innkeeper's name is Shunsui Kyoraku and he is a relative of the young women we are trying to locate."

Kisuke nodded and stuck out his hand, "I will certainly remember. And now that you know where I live, feel free to visit at any time you are in the area."

Accepting the proffered hand, Ichigo grinned and said, "It would be my pleasure. Thank you for your time."

Nodding to his companions, the four men made their way outside and mounted their horses. Along with everyone else, Orihime followed the group to the yard and stood there waiting to bid them farewell.

As Ichigo and the others adjusted themselves atop the horses, Kisuke asked, "I'm curious. Exactly how did the horses become so spooked earlier?"

Everyone looked to Keigo as he was the only human present who had the ability to answer and he said quickly, "It wasn't my fault. The horses and I were out here minding our own business when out of nowhere, these two white things start running around the horses for no reason. Before I can react, the horses spook and start rearing and that's when you guys came out to help me."

Orihime sighed inwardly as she guessed that because the two swans happened to be Chizuru and Yachiru that they had been chasing one another or trying to play some sort of game with the horses. Obviously, their antics had blown up in their faces and Orihime could only hope that the two 'silly gooses' as their late father sometimes called them had learned their lesson not to act so carelessly around creatures larger than themselves.

Ichigo's response was, "At the next stop, Shuhei, you watch the horses."

With that, the four men said farewell and rode away as Keigo protested against all the unjust things his friends said and did to him.

Leaning in close to her husband's ear, Yoruichi whispered, "I certainly hope Prince Ichigo takes you up on your offer to visit us again."

Giving her a knowing smile, but asking the question anyways, Kisuke responded, "And why is that?"

"If the prince were really part of the whole kidnapping scheme, then he wouldn't have freaked out as much as he did when he saw Orihime bleeding."

"I agree. This should prove a very interesting love affair with the man engaged to another woman, or so he thinks, while if he visits here often he could be falling in love with a commoner, not knowing that the two women are actually the same. On her end, she knows exactly who he is even though he will come here pretending to be someone else, but she is not sure she can trust him. After this is all over, I might just have to create a play out of all the drama that has ensued."

Yoruichi gave an exasperated sigh as she also anticipated the drama that would unfold in the next few weeks with mixed emotions.

**Author's Note:**

It seems like my average time between posting chapters for this story is ten days...not very good and I apologize for how long it takes. I know I keep saying this, but I am REALLY hoping this time to cut that time in half and finish up this story. This is definitely not going to be as long as The Common Thread, so I am hoping to have this story finished in about ten more chapters. We'll see how everything comes together.

If Ichigo acted slightly out of character in here, I do partially apologize since I was really struggling with this whole scene after the horse trampling accident trying to make everything work, but again in a sense just like in The Common Thread, this version of Ichigo is probably not going to be exactly like Kubo's. He was raised with better manners and higher expectations and more exposure to dealing with lots of people, especially females, so he won't be quite as blunt as he normally is.

Also, the love between Ichigo and Orihime/'Zhinu' is going to develop fairly quickly than I normally have worked with (Irodonio aside), but I feel that it is a lot more slow and normal than a lot of fairy tales where it seems the couple meet, fall in love at first sight and are married in the next paragraph a lot of the time.

If you are curious about my having Kisuke introducing Orihime as 'Zhinu', just like with the hair, it seems to me that it wouldn't take long for Ichigo to be able to piece everything together really quickly and I want Ichigo to actually fall in love with Orihime for who she is and not just because she is his fiancee. I could be wrong, but from what I have found 'Zhinu' is the Chinese equivalent of 'Orihime', so I thought it was fairly appropriate.

As always, if you have questions, critiques or comments feel free to let me know what you are thinking so far! Enjoy!


	10. The antidote

Transforming Love: Part 10

"And just what do you plan to do about this?"

"Why am I always the one everyone looks to when things go wrong that are not even remotely my responsibility? Why don't you ask him since he's the one who got himself into this mess in the first place?"

"That's just the point. Because he can't think straight in this situation, it is almost certain that he will botch things up royally before this can be worked out."

"I can't understand what might be going through his head right now. He's got a fiancée and yet it seems like he can't stop thinking about that girl in the woods."

"That very same point has been bothering me as well. Exactly what was she like? Could she be a witch?"

"Don't be stupid, of course she wasn't a witch or all four of us would probably be fighting over her. You know how egotistical witches can be. Nothing would feed their pride and vanity more than to have four handsome, well-to-do men who happen to be friends at each other's throats over who she loves the most. Obviously, he seems to be the only one seriously thinking about her."

"I'm just surprised his father and the others haven't said anything."

"The king is far too distracted with his guests even though they have now signed the alliance agreement, his sisters have been entertaining the different royal entourages, the servants are either too loyal or too unobservant to say or notice anything and we are the only ones who know Ichigo well enough to realize that he has been extremely distracted of late."

"So what do we do?"

"I suppose the best we can do is wait and see if this infatuation with the girl in the woods blows over or becomes a serious problem. Ichigo isn't one to put off a decision like this for long, so we should know within the next few days."

With that, Prince Ichigo's close friends moved closer to the prince on the training field. Ichigo had been too distracted with his own thoughts and was taking out his frustrations on an armored dummy, so he had not heard his friends talking amongst each other.

Ever since his encounter with the Urahara's and especially Zhinu two days ago, Ichigo had been finding himself thinking more and more about the silent girl in the woods and less and less about his young fiancée who was still missing without a trace. The way Zhinu's eyes had flashed at him, the way her dark hair fell about her face softly and yet did not obscure her features, the way her hand had moved when she wrote or how gracefully she had run away from him at the river…Ichigo shook his head to try and clear his muddled thoughts yet again and attempted to conjure up images of his fiancée from when he had danced with her on the first night of their meeting. To his growing frustration, the more he tried to remember how Queen Orihime had acted on that night, the more it grew dimmer and dimmer in his thoughts. It had been almost two weeks since his first and last encounter with the young queen and yet it already seemed like years to him. A stark contrast with the ever clearer memories of Zhinu.

One could almost say that Kisuke's predictions were coming true, however, while Ichigo was wrestling with his attachment to what he believed to be two completely different people, on Orihime's part, her attraction to Ichigo or any thoughts about the young prince in general were not at all present at the moment. Not due to callousness, but rather because she had something far more important on her mind at that point in time. Mayuri was about to administer the human to swan transfiguration antidote to her sisters.

He had prefaced the entire affair by giving a long speech about how science was all about trial and error. If Orihime had been in any other state of mind, she would have been concerned with the obvious note of possible failure in this experiment, but the thought that she might be able to see and hold her sisters in their true forms for even the most brief of times was far too important to Orihime. She also knew that Kisuke would never allow Mayuri to give her sisters something that even had the smallest chance of proving fatal or harmful in any way, so the worst she had to fear was that the antidote would simply not work.

All seven of her swan sisters were sitting rather warily on one of the work tables in the laboratory while Orihime and the other members of the Urahara family as well as Shinji, Hiyori, Hachi and Soi Fon watched Mayuri and Kisuke finish prepping the syringes full of the antidote.

"We have to administer the antidote straight into the bloodstream in order to, we believe, have the most potency," Kisuke explained breezily before he turned to Mayuri and asked, "We ready?"

Mayuri rolled his eyes saying, "I've been ready since yesterday, but you had to insist on putting things off for another day for whatever reason."

Kisuke ignored the jab and said, "Well then, let's get this party started."

Everyone held their breath as Mayuri and Kisuke set about administering the antidote to all of the swans before they both backed away in order to survey the effects of the drug. For a minute or so, nothing happened and Orihime felt her heart drop in disappointment when she noticed the two swans who had gotten the antidote first (Rukia and Tatsuki because of their violet and brown eyes) beginning to grow and change shape. Within five minutes, Orihime's seven flesh and blood sisters were standing before her once again alive and well.

Rukia was the first one to speak, saying, "Ugh. I got a kink in my neck."

With that, Orihime lost all composure and all but threw herself amongst her sisters, hugging necks, kissing cheeks and dripping tears all over while her sisters did the same. When they had all been captured by the mysterious mad scientist, Orihime and her sisters had woken up and discovered that they were wearing some sort of coarse yet modest shift and while Orihime had long since gotten rid of it, Rukia, Tatsuki and the others were still wearing theirs when they transformed back into humans.

All seven girls were talking, crying and laughing at the same time as Orihime cried and hugged them as if she never wanted to let them go and no one thought it necessary to interrupt the reunion of the sisters.

Rukia was once again the first to speak up, only this time she addressed the others in the room by saying, "Well, I suppose we should start introducing ourselves. For myself, I already know who each of you are since I was able to understand what you were saying while I was a swan. I'm Rukia."

Tatsuki nodded her head in greeting saying, "Name's Tatsuki."

"Nemu," the green-eyed girl said simply.

Yachiru broke in excitedly saying, "And she's Isane. Next to her is Momo. Then there's Chizuru and I'm Yachiru!"

Kisuke spoke up first saying, "And it is a pleasure to finally meet all of you 'in the flesh' as it were. Also, now that we have met all of you, we will be able to tell you apart a little better now that we know which pair of eyes goes with which girl."

Mayuri stepped up in a very business-like manner and began taking charge by saying, "Wonderful, wonderful. Everyone knows everyone's names now so everyone should be happy, however, there is still work to be done. The antidote might wear off at any time and I need to ask you girls a few questions before you change back."

The Inoue sisters looked at each other before Nemu spoke up asking, "What do you need to know?"

Mayuri got right to the point asking, "Do you feel any side effects from the original potion or antidote such as dizziness, fatigue, loss of sight or feeling in your limbs, lack of coordination, memory loss, nausea or any other potentially dangerous symptoms?"

Nemu looked at the others for confirmation before she answered, "No to all of the above. We are all in full control of our extremities and bodily functions."

As he wrote down the answer, Mayuri continued firing questions which Nemu would answer about their overall health over the years, ancestral diseases, how the original human to animal transfiguration potion was administered and lots of other questions about similar topics. The interrogation went on for over a half an hour before Yoruichi finally put her foot down.

"That is quite enough for now, Mayuri. While I'm sure you have lots of other very important data to collect, don't forget that these young ladies have been sacrificing whatever time they may have for you so you can be kind and allow them to spend some time with their sister and us. And anyway, I'm sure they are positively famished and it smells like Tessai has finished with dinner so let's all eat."

At first Mayuri looked offended at being so interrupted from his work and seemed to be about to protest when Yoruichi gave him a very significant look and began cracking her knuckles. Deciding that he could still collect some data from the dinner table, Mayuri nodded in consent and everyone proceeded upstairs to eat.

When they reached the table, Tatsuki couldn't suppress her groan of delight as she said, "Oh, you don't know how torturous it is to smell all this good food every day as a swan and imagine what it might taste like."

Hearing Tatsuki say that, Orihime felt guilty that she hadn't even thought of offering her sisters bits and pieces of her food at every meal if it was that horrible for them to smell all the things she got to eat every day and which they had been accustomed to eating.

Isane seemed to understand what Orihime was thinking as she laid her hand gently on her sister's arm and said, "While it was rather hard to smell the food and remember what it tasted like when we were human, we actually can't eat that food as swans. You didn't notice the first night we came here, but Yachiru got it into her head that she had to try some of Tessai's delicious smelling food. We tried to talk her out of it, but you know Yachiru. Anyway, she got really sick and for a few minutes we were considering waking up Kisuke or Mayuri since we weren't sure if Yachiru was going to die. Fortunately, Yachiru hadn't eaten much and the next minute she got the food out of her stomach and simply rested the next day. As you know, it wasn't long before she was recovered and back to her normal self, so I don't there was any real harm done."

"I know I made a silly mistake and I promise I will be more careful about what I do," Yachiru spoke up as she seemed to sense Orihime's guilt at not being aware of her sister's almost life-threatening experience.

Yachiru had likely almost died while Orihime slept peacefully and unaware. How could she ever hope to help her sisters when time after time she was oblivious to their pain and suffering? On two different occasions, her sisters had showed no hesitation in protecting her from a potential threat. Granted, Kisuke and Mayuri had turned out to be trustworthy but the fact still remained that her sisters had saved her twice while she had yet to do a single thing for them in return.

Sensing Orihime's distress, Rukia took her sister's hand and said forcefully, "Don't you go blaming yourself for this. I can see that you are letting your imagination run wild again thinking that you are to blame for everything that has happened. You aren't the one who forced us to drink that potion and we certainly aren't the only ones who suffered at the hands of that madman."

Momo added, "She's right, Orihime. And don't forget that without you, we wouldn't have been able to escape from that horrible place at all. You were the one who fought with him and freed us from our cages."

Orihime was about to burst into tears when Mayuri's mumbling voice said, "I liked these girls better as swans. Much less of this mushy, touchy-feely sister nonsense."

Before Yoruichi could say anything, Kisuke loudly inquired, "Who's ready to eat? That food's going to get cold really fast!"

And without any further ado, everyone sat down and began eating. Conversation was not lacking as the Inoue sisters had questions for the Urahara family and friends and vice versa. Because of the rather loud talking at the table, at first, no one noticed the firm knock at the front door. After the third repetition, Jinta finally noticed it and announced to the room at large that someone was at the front door. Kisuke got up in order to answer the summons and everyone sat wondering who could want to visit at this hour. Less than a minute later, everyone froze in shock as the sound of the Crown Prince's voice drifted into the dining room.

Orihime's heart stopped for a few beats as she realized that out of all the people she would have expected to show up, Prince Ichigo was certainly not high on that list and most definitely not someone who she wanted to see right now. She looked at each of her sisters in turn and she could see that they had come to the same conclusion as her: just because the prince had failed to recognize Orihime due to her lack of speech and unexpected change of hair color, does not mean he could possibly fail to recognize the rest of the Inoue sisters, especially with Rukia's unusual violet eyes or Yachiru's signature light pink hair. Even if somehow they were lucky enough to avoid detection from the prince since his friends had spent the most time with them the evening of the ball, the likelihood that he had come here without any of those same friends was extremely doubtful and those young men at least could identify their previous dancing and dinner partners.

The question now remained: what were they to do?

**Author's Note:**

I AM SOOOO SORRY! This story is taking WAY longer than I had anticipated and the more I try to make myself come up with this faster the longer it seems to take. Hopefully, this time around I will not be so stressed about getting it completely right and just let it flow.

As always, feel free to let me know where things aren't adding up or if there is anything you feel needs to be added. I do read and try to incorporate my readers' ideas as much as I can. There is a plan for where the story will eventually go, but there is still plenty of space to work in others' ideas. Especially if you have any ideas for what Rukia and the others should do, whether hide, send Orihime out to talk to Ichigo or what. I'm open for thoughts and input! :)

Thank you all so much for your continued support and I am really going to try and work towards having the next part up really quickly so that I won't leave this kind of cliffhanger hanging over your heads for too long.


	11. The truth revealed on both sides

Transforming Love: Part 11

Usually in a time of crisis, the first thing someone says not to do is the very same thing that everyone happens to be doing right at that very same moment. In this case, it was Shinji who spoke first.

"Nobody panic," and while it was true that no one had jumped from their seats in fright, began screaming bloody murder in terror at this situation, or did any other number of ridiculous and unnecessary theatrics, that did not change the fact that everyone's heart rate was going at least 100 miles a minute and they were all considering different ways that this entire situation could end in. None of them were very pleasant.

Because they were all so on edge, everyone jumped when they heard Kisuke all but yell from the next room in an extremely cheery tone, "Oh, so you came back to talk to my niece Zhinu? I'm sure she would be delighted to come and greet you!"

Orihime's heart couldn't decide at that moment whether to remain lodged in her throat or to plummet into the pit of her stomach, but somehow she managed to rise shakily to her feet. As she tried to avoid eye contact with anyone for fear of losing whatever composure she could possibly muster before standing in front of the prince, one thing managed to slow her racing heart if only slightly.

'If I am able to keep Prince Ichigo occupied for long enough, everything will be fine,' Orihime thought to herself, 'There should be no reason for him to come back into the dining room and so everyone should be safe for the time being.'

As she was walking, Orihime had the presence of mind to grab a large sheaf of paper, a pen and inkwell before she made her way into the front room. Upon entering, Orihime's gaze was automatically drawn to the prince and what she saw written in his expression caused her to pause for a moment in confusion. Prince Ichigo looked very concerned, agitated and all around uncomfortable about something and yet resolved on some point. Looking behind him, Orihime was extremely surprised to see that it looked as though the prince had come all alone this time and she was immediately curious to know what could have possibly evoked such a change in behavior in the normally calm and composed prince.

The prince looked up at Orihime's approach and something flashed through his eyes before he said politely, "A pleasure to see you again, Miss Zhinu. I do apologize for this unexpected arrival and I hope that you are not busy at the moment."

'Quite the contrary. I am going to be quite busy trying to keep you occupied and away from the kitchen,' thought Orihime, but she simply waved her hand in a way that said she really didn't mind.

Turning to Kisuke, Prince Ichigo opened his mouth but before he could say a word, Kisuke said, "If my niece is willing, I have no problem with you speaking with her outside in the front yard for a while."

With the attention focused upon her, Orihime took a moment to realize that this was the perfect opportunity. Even though she had no idea why the prince had come and she couldn't help but feel some anxiety on that point, however, by talking with him outside Orihime would be able to effectively shield her sisters from discovery. This was a chance not to be overlooked and so Orihime nodded in acquiescence and proceeded to lead Prince Ichigo into the front yard.

The moment Kisuke had closed the door in order to give them some privacy, the prince turned but before he could say anything Orihime held up a note that read 'Before we begin, please just call me Zhinu since you make me feel like an old maid when you say "Miss Zhinu". Also, what is your name?'

Ichigo blinked in surprise when he realized that he never had given a name the last time he had come by. Mentally kicking himself and racking his brain at the same time, it was several moments before he was able to form a coherent sentence. Later on, he would berate himself for not being more creative with his name selection, but in the moment he blurted the first name that came into his head.

"N-N-Niu…Niu Lang! My name is Niu Lang! You can simply call me Niu!"

Orihime was hard pressed not to grin or give away the fact that she knew that he had come up with that name on the spot. Personally, she had asked Kisuke why he had chosen the name 'Zhinu' for her, but all he would say is that he thought the name suited her. Now it seemed as though the prince had completed the legend by taking on the alias of 'Niu Lang' (-for my readers-if you don't understand exactly what is going on right now and why the name choice is so funny, I will explain at the end, so don't worry about it for now).

A few moments later, Orihime had written, 'All right then, Niu, what did you wish to discuss with me?'

"Right…Mi-…uh, I mean, Zhinu…m-hmm…well…how is your head?"

Ichigo had to seriously restrain himself from smacking himself on the forehead. Honestly, if he wasn't going to come right out and tell the girl that he'd been thinking about her more than he should be and that he had a fiancée somewhere waiting for him (if Zhinu had asked for an explanation, Ichigo would have been hard pressed to give one since once again he had not thought things through before he just simply took action), then he should at least come up with something better than asking about her injury. Well, maybe he had been rather interested to know how she had been faring in that respect, so asking the question did seem like the right thing to do…if only he hadn't made the whole thing sound like he was a young boy trying to tell a girl that he liked her (to which if any of his friends had been there, they would have confirmed that he was in fact acting in that very manner and he would have loudly protested to the contrary) or something like that.

Orihime's response was to smile gently and push back her hair from her forehead in order for Ichigo to better see how well the abrasion was healing. Without thinking, Ichigo leaned closer in order to have a better look. As a result, his chest was only a few inches away from Orihime's face, which caused a rise of color in said young woman's cheeks. While she could be a very affectionate person, the only man Orihime had ever had much physical contact with had been her father who had been very prone to hugging his daughters, kissing their foreheads and giving other small gestures of love which they had all happily reciprocated. To dance with the prince had been one thing, but now his close proximity almost seemed more…intimate and personal. It was really weird now that she thought about it because one would think it would be the other way around.

Ichigo failed to notice Orihime's discomfort as he said, "Well, it does seem to be healing up pretty well. Are you sure this is the only injury you received from that accident? I didn't get a chance to ask you when I was last here."

As he backed away in order to observe Orihime's response, the young woman had managed to bring herself back under control so that she once again appeared calm and collected as she smiled and shook her head in response to his question.

Under his breath, Ichigo said, "Uryu was right. I do worry too much over these things."

Before Orihime could ask what he was referring to, Ichigo pressed on saying, "Anyway, my true purpose in coming here was to not only make sure you were all right physically, but also to be sure that we came to an understanding about something that I failed to mention before. I am not entirely sure how to say this and you might be rather shocked to hear this, but I have a fiancée. We have not set a date for the wedding as of now, but I wanted you to know that I am intended for another young woman."

For the space of about a minute, the only thing Orihime could even think to do was stare at the prince in complete and utter surprise. He had come all this way to tell her that he was engaged to 'another woman' who just so happened to be herself…why?  
>Thinking back to their last encounter, Orihime tried to remember if she had shown any interest in him or vice versa. Nothing was coming to mind. However, something must have happened between them for the prince to feel so conflicted over that experience to think that it merited a trip out to this remote location in order to tell her that their supposed attachment had to be cut off before it had even really begun. She had met with the prince a grand total of three times and each time he managed to surprise her a little more and yet when she reflected on his actions, it all made perfect sense with the kind of character qualities she had assumed he had from the beginning. Honorable, generous, loyal, chivalrous, honest, protective and strong.<p>

Apparently, Orihime's surprised expression and lack of an answer indicated to the prince that she was in shock (which she was, but for a different reason entirely than what he assumed) and so he gently continued, "I came to tell you this not because you did anything wrong at our last meeting, but because…" he faltered for a moment looking unsure of whether he ought to continue, but then that look of resolve and honesty came back into his eyes and he said, "…because for the past two days, I have been finding myself thinking about you more and more and my fiancée less and less. This sounds positively ludicrous, especially coming from me, since I have always been the one to scoff at people talking about 'love at first sight'. When it comes to making decisions on the battlefield, I never hesitate, but when it comes to this love business…I find myself floundering around like a beached fish."

Rubbing a hand on the back of his neck, Ichigo went on, "I am sorry if I have embarrassed you and I completely understand if you don't think of me in a romantic light, but I had to come here and say all this because I hate keeping secrets from people, especially ones of this kind. One thought that kept going through my mind was that if I don't make this right now, when I exchange vows with my intended…I actually wouldn't be able to since there was a possibility that I had made a kind of attachment with another woman. I'm being selfish, but I couldn't live like that and I hope you understand."

While Ichigo's intention during the speech had been to convince the woman he knew as Zhinu not to fall for him, Orihime felt her heart become irrevocably lost to this man. While he had not professed love for his 'intended', he would not betray her. He had entrusted her with his secret anguish and now she had the power and the will and the determination to set his mind at ease.

Taking her pen, she swiftly wrote, 'I am sorry to have been the cause of so much misery for you these past few days, but please be at peace now. Also, I hope you will forgive me for not being totally honest with you from the beginning, but I feel that you deserve to know the truth. You needn't have put yourself through such agony since the fact of the matter is that I am your betrothed.'

As the prince read through her note, his expression changed from one of calm resolution, to confusion and then to absolute bewilderment and shock. Somehow he managed to ask, "What?"

Orihime's reply was, 'I'll tell you all the details inside where Kisuke, Mayuri and my sisters can confirm my story, but for now let me simply say that my name is not Zhinu. It is Orihime Inoue.'

In Ichigo's mind the only thought he could manage at that moment was, 'This is not turning out like I planned,' before the woman he had thought was named Zhinu gently took his elbow and led him around the house to the back door.

As they walked, the young woman's message began to sink in and Ichigo began mentally berating himself for not seeing the similarities sooner. However, after a moment's reflection, he had to admit that meeting an elegant queen dressed in a ball gown and mask at night and running into a young woman who had just thrown herself underneath several bucking horses were two completely different scenarios and so therefore he was able to understand how he had not seen how they could be the same person. Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought that Uryu or Mizuiro would have been able to tell, but he quickly dismissed that thought saying that even his other friends who had been with him had not noticed either.

Then the truth hit him. This woman whom he was supposed to be engaged to had not told him who he was right away. She had lied to him. Ok, well, maybe not lied, but she certainly had not told him her true name or who she actually was until just then. His first reaction was to feel furious at the idea that she had kept such information from him, but for whatever reason it was almost immediately replaced with confusion. Why had she not told him who she actually was? What was going on?

Just before she opened the door, Ichigo thought, 'Wait a minute, why should I believe her?'

In the few moments before the door was opened, Ichigo's attentive ears heard the sound of running feet, frantic whispering, scraping wood, rattling dishes and creaking hinges.

'This had better be good,' was Ichigo's last thought before he was lead into the Urahara's kitchen.

Upon entering the kitchen, Ichigo and Orihime were met with the sight of Mayuri calmly sitting at the table, writing carelessly in his journal and pausing only briefly to take a sip of tea before continuing to write. While Mayuri was the perfect picture of calm disinterest, over by the sink, Yoruichi, Tessai and Ururu looked as though they were trying to nonchalantly wash, dry and put away a load of dishes. Kisuke was leaning against the pantry doors and looking for all the world as if there was nothing wrong, but Ichigo could tell that the man was pushing hard against the doors in order to keep them from opening. Shinji, Hiyori, Hachi and Jinta were playing a kind of card game not far away from Mayuri and Ichigo could tell from the way one of Hachi's cards was facing his 'opponents' that they had set 'the game' up in a great hurry.

Kisuke was the first to speak in his signature breezy tone saying, "Ah, is anything the matter you two?"

Orihime answered by holding up a note that says, 'He needs to know. Please help me tell him.'

Ichigo was surprised when Kisuke grinned and said, "Glad to see you've come around Your Highness all though I must say that I was not expected you to tell him quite so suddenly. However, all things considered, this is probably the best time since your sisters can help fill in the gaps of the story."

Before Ichigo could ask or say anything, Kisuke turned around, opened the door and said, "Come on out ladies. All of you. Your sister requires your assistance."

Out of the pantry walked four young women, all with dark hair. From behind Hachi came a girl with red hair while a young woman with light gray hair crawled out from underneath the table. Hearing a door opening from behind, Ichigo's eyes grew wide as a young girl with light pink hair pulled herself out of one of the cupboards.

Orihime gently led Ichigo over to one of the benches and nonverbally asked him to sit down, which he did without complaint before he managed to say, "So you are the Inoue sisters. What is going on?"

For the next hour or so, Kisuke and the Inoue family told Ichigo everything that had happened since the ball. While Ichigo did cut in a few times to ask for clarification on some point, for the most part he sat and listened closely to the tale. At the end, everyone allowed him some time to allow all the information to sink in.

After a time, Ichigo spoke up saying, "I guess it all makes sense now. The only thing I don't get is why you didn't say something sooner. Why didn't you trust me?"

Orihime had been anticipating this question and so had already written out her answer saying, 'I didn't know you. That night at the ball was the first time I had actually spoken with you and after all that happened that night after I left the ball, I was confused, scared and somewhat paranoid. I still don't know who is responsible for all of this, but I had determined not to drag you into it if you weren't involved or just not say anything in case you were involved and simply didn't know who I was. To be perfectly honest, ever since I saw you after you came here the last time, I have felt somewhat guilty about not being honest with you, but then thoughts of what happened to my sisters and what could still happen to them because of me strengthened my resolve to keep the whole thing a secret.'

Looking at her intently, Ichigo demanded, "So why tell me now? What makes you think that you can trust me?"

Having known he would ask those questions next, Orihime held up a note that read, 'You had no obligation or need to come out here to confess to a girl whom you thought was common that while you were attracted to her, that you were already engaged to another. As a prince, you could have thought such a person beneath your notice and inferior to you, or you could have exploited the girl's feelings for your own satisfaction if you had wanted. You chose the hard and honorable way instead and poured your heart out and confessed attraction and apologized for not being able to act on those feelings. I know with all my heart that I can trust you and I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me.'

As he read those words, Ichigo found himself looking at things from Orihime's perspective. If something like this had happened to his own sisters or his friends…now everything began to make sense.

Rising to his feet, Ichigo said simply, "Thank you for being honest with me. Your secret is safe with me."

Looking at her seriously, he continued, "I have to get back now, but before I leave I would like to tell you a few things."

Orihime nodded and so Ichigo went on, "First of all, while I don't have any proof as of yet, both Sir Kenpachi and I suspect that Sir Aizen might have had some part in all of this. The day after you and your sisters disappeared, search parties were organized, Sir Aizen was part of mine and as we stopped to water the horses he seemed to be trying to make me believe that you had run away because you found out about our engagement and were scared. Both our suspicions were further aroused when Sir Aizen took it upon himself to sign the alliance agreement in your absence, basically taking on the role as the substitute ruler of Rikka. As I said, we have no proof as of now, but believe me when I say that with all this information you have told me, it will not be long before this whole mystery is cleared up."

Everyone had listened very carefully to Ichigo's information and Rukia was the first one to speak, saying, "I can't say we are very surprised. If Sir Aizen can't become king over Rikka by marrying Orihime, it can only make sense that he would want to get rid of her and all of us at the same time."

Isane said, "While that may be true, there is still one fact that cannot be overlooked. In order for Sir Aizen to actually take the throne, he would have to prove that we were dead, so why did he not kill us instead of having us kidnapped by a mad scientist and transformed into swans?"

Tatsuki groaned and rubbed her head as she said, "I'll be sure to ask him after we find a permanent cure for this transforming potion and I'm able to kick his sorry butt all the way back to Rikka."

Before anyone could ask, Rukia wrapped her arms around her stomach and said, "Looks like our time is up."

Turning her gaze to Orihime, Rukia said, "Don't you dare start crying or I'm going want to cry too."

Chizuru turned to Kisuke and Mayuri saying, "You'd better find a full cure for this soon because this whole transformation business is far more uncomfortable than you would imagine."

And in less than a minute, there were eleven humans and seven swans in the kitchen.

Ichigo could only stare and say, "If I hadn't believed you earlier, that right there would have definitely convinced me. You'd better be working on a way to help those girls."

The last sentence had been directed at Kisuke and Mayuri, to which Mayuri finally looked up from his notes to glare haughtily at the prince saying, "Don't tell me how fast to work on my potions and I won't instruct you on how to effectively rule a kingdom. Granted you could learn many useful things from me-"

Ichigo cut him off saying, "Ok, ok, I get the picture. I'm going."

With that he went out into the front yard and mounted his horse. Feeling someone looking at him from behind, Ichigo turned to see Orihime standing in the doorway. Her gaze was sad, anxious and hopeful and Ichigo said the first thing that came to his mind before he had a chance to think about it.

"Don't worry. Everything will turn out all right in the end. I promise."

Returning his gaze, Orihime's eyes began to sparkle with happiness and unshed tears as she raised her hand and waved. The next moment, her entire face lit up in the most warm and joyful smile Ichigo had ever seen. A smile that reminded him of his beloved mother, especially when he felt his own mouth stretch in order to imitate the young woman's smile.

When he arrived back at the castle, his thoughts were so occupied with his newly discovered fiancée that he didn't notice Uryu racing out to meet him until the other man grabbed Ichigo's horse's reigns.

"What are you doing Uryu?"

"You need to come now Ichigo. Sir Kenpachi has been arrested on the grounds that he played a major role in the Inoue family's disappearance."

**Author's Note:**

Ok, I had been planning to keep Orihime's identity a secret for a little while longer, but when I seriously thought about it and I typed out Ichigo's confession...it made far more sense to handle things this way.

As promised, for those of you who don't know why the name 'Niu Lang' was so funny, I told you that I got the name Zhinu from the Chinese version of the Tanabata legend (and also from 126amy since she said she was going to use the name in one of her stories and typical me, it completely slipped my mind. Sorry and thank you amy!) and Niu Lang is the name of Zhinu's lover, so...you get the picture. :)

Hopefully everything is still making sense and as always, feel free to leave comments, questions and critiques at any time. I love hearing from all you guys! Enjoy!


	12. A not so good adventure that ends well

Transforming Love: Part 12

"Get our horses. Now."

"At once, Your Highness."

As the groomsman hurried away to carry out Prince Ichigo's orders, the prince then turned to another servant and demanded, "Go and fetch enough hunting equipment for my friends and me."

With a quick bow, the servant scurried away to fulfill his master's request.

Behind him, Ichigo's friends looked at each other trying to silently ask the others who should be the one to ask, when Toshiro rolled his eyes and spoke up in a bored tone, "While it really isn't any of my business how you treat the servants, it doesn't hurt to use common courtesy even when you're in this big of a hurry."

Ichigo paused for a moment before he grunted in response, which prompted Shuhei to say, "The last time you were in this big of a hurry to go hunting, you were in desperate need to blow off some steam because your father would attack you in the morning in an attempt to wake you up. What's going on?"

Even though he didn't turn around to look at his friends, they could all tell that he had calmed down slightly as he waited a moment before he said, "Later," which everyone, even Keigo, understood.

For the past three days since Ichigo had come back and discovered that Sir Kenpachi had been arrested, he had been trying to stay cool and act like he didn't know what was actually going on.

Upon arriving back at the castle and hearing the news, Ichigo had barely managed to stop himself from barging into the meeting room where all the other kings were and demand to know what was going on. Instead, he had pulled off a cool and aloof manner when he stepped inside to find out why Sir Kenpachi was suspected of having a hand in the Inoue family's disappearance.

The evidence against Sir Kenpachi was quite convincing and likely would have fooled Ichigo if he hadn't already had very strong suspicions about Sir Aizen. There were letters written to known commanders in the Hueco Mundo armies asking about forming an alliance with them that were written in Sir Kenpachi's hand, but not signed by him. The replies said that they would be willing to negotiate if he would be willing to prove his loyalty in some way and thus the idea of taking the Inoue royal family to Hueco Mundo as political hostages and force the kingdoms of Tensho, Shihoin, Rikka and Zenbonzakura to live under the all-powerful rule of Hueco Mundo. Also, there were maps showing where the Inoue family should be taken as they were smuggled out of Tensho and to Hueco Mundo were also found.

All the evidence pointed to Sir Kenpachi as a traitor of the most heinous kind and it was a miracle that he had not been executed already. There actually had been a kind of miracle or reprieve for Sir Kenpachi that came through the influence of…Sir Aizen. He wanted to take Sir Kenpachi back to Rikka in order to stand trial there for his crimes, but before they could leave Tensho, all the kings had agreed that with the map of hiding places leading to Hueco Mundo, they now stood a chance of finding the Inoue family alive and well. Sir Aizen had left yesterday with a contingent of his own soldiers from Rikka in order to track down and save Queen Orihime and her sisters. He had refused all offers of help saying that saving the queen was a matter of honor that needed to be settled. And with that, Ichigo was sure beyond a shadow of doubt that Sir Aizen was the traitor.

The only problem was he could not prove it. Sir Kenpachi was guilty in the eyes of the law because of all the hard evidence that had been stacked against him, while Sir Aizen was completely innocent in the eyes of the law because he had played his cards well.

For a brief time, Ichigo had considered waiting for Sir Aizen to come back empty-handed, because Ichigo knew that Sir Aizen had no idea where Orihime actually was if he was planning on following the map that had been found, and then bring forth the real Orihime and her sisters denouncing Sir Aizen as the real mastermind behind the whole plot. However, the moment the thought entered his head, he had to grudgingly admit that even then, Queen Orihime's word would not be enough to set Sir Kenpachi free because she had no proof that Sir Aizen was the man who hired that mad scientist to kidnap them.

Another thought that had bugged him was the fact that the mad scientist had turned Orihime's sisters into swans at all. From Orihime's account, after she had set her sisters free, the scientist had grabbed her and said he had no more use for her sisters. There were still too many missing pieces to Ichigo's mind and he had a sinking feeling that they were the most important in figuring out Sir Aizen's true motive.

For now, Ichigo felt ready to explode with all the frustration and irritation over what had happened over the past few days and as Shuhei had wisely pointed out, he needed something to help him vent. Hunting allowed him to go into the woods (something he had always done when he desperately needed privacy and time to think), ride a horse or decide to walk on his own, carry a weapon but be allowed to decide whether or not he actually wanted to use it…overall, hunting gave him a sense of control when everything else didn't seem to be making sense. It also gave him an excuse to take his friends out and speak to them in private. Now seemed like a great opportunity to fill his friends in and get advice about what to do next.

Because Sir Kenpachi had been labeled as a traitor, for Ichigo to go down to Kenpachi's cell and ask for a private audience with the prisoner, it would have looked immensely suspicious and Ichigo didn't want to take the chance of Sir Aizen accusing him of something as well. As a result, Ichigo was still the only person in the entire castle who actually knew where Orihime and her sisters were hiding, but Ichigo knew that if he couldn't come right out and tell his own father about it for fear of repercussions from Sir Aizen then talking to his friends was the very next best thing. While Keigo might overreact at first, Ichigo knew that together they could start thinking of ways to bring Sir Aizen's real scheme to light.

Less than ten minutes later, with Ichigo leading the way, the eight young men set out to go hunting. It took another twenty minutes before Ichigo felt they were far enough away from the castle to bring up the subject. His plan was to ride to the Urahara's house so that by the time he had finished revealing his suspicions about Aizen, they would have reached the house where Orihime was staying so that he could waylay any doubts that his friends might have. He was pretty sure his friends would believe him right away, but just in case it couldn't hurt to go and see his fiancée and at least make sure she was doing all right. He also had to tell her about the arrest of Sir Kenpachi…he should probably pull her aside and tell her that…or maybe not… 

So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he almost didn't catch Shuhei commenting to Keigo about bringing some goose back to the castle to have for dinner that night. Looking behind him, Ichigo saw that Shuhei was preparing to shoot his crossbow at something, so Ichigo turned his attention to the sky and immediately his heart dropped into his stomach.

Reacting instinctively, Ichigo yanked his horse in a desperate attempt to reach Shuhei in time as he shouted, "NO!"

Everyone looked at Ichigo in astonishment and while Shuhei jumped in surprise at Ichigo's outburst, Shuhei managed to bump the trigger and release the arrow into the air. As Ichigo turned to see the arrow's trajectory, he desperately hoped that it would not find its intended target. However, it was not to be.

What Shuhei and Keigo had assumed was a goose was actually a swan. The arrow pierced the swan's body caused the poor creature to plummet to the earth. Even more disheartening was the fact that there had been four swans flying together and one had flown in front of the others in order to save them from the arrow.

Jumping off his horse, Ichigo yelled to the others, "Leave the horses and follow me!"

Knowing that his friends would follow his directions without asking questions, Ichigo took off in the general direction where the swan had fallen. There was no way to know for sure which one of the Inoue sisters had been hit, but Ichigo had a feeling that Orihime was not far away and she would be absolutely crushed at the sight of seeing one of her beloved sisters shot down. While riding the horses would have allowed him to find them faster, Ichigo could not risk crashing through the forest and possibly trample Orihime or her sisters by accident.

Two minutes later, Ichigo and the others came to a small clearing where a large patch of thorny bushes was growing. Close to the center, Ichigo could see the wounded swan lying on top of the bushes, motionless.

Before he could stop himself, Ichigo thought ruefully, 'Of course she would fall in a bramble patch rather than a field of wildflowers.'

Pushing the thought aside and ignoring his friends' demands for an explanation, Ichigo made his way over to the bramble patch and noticing that both Orihime and the other swans nowhere to be seen at the moment. That quickly changed a moment later when the three remaining swans alighted in some trees after seeing for themselves that Ichigo was there. The next moment, Ichigo heard the sounds of someone coming their way at a frantic pace (so frantic that they didn't seem to care when they stumbled and fell quite frequently) so that it wasn't too long before Ichigo saw Orihime emerge from the forest as well.

At the moment, Ichigo forced himself not to look at the young woman because he was sure that she was probably fairly banged up from her desperate run and so called out to her, "Just stay back! I'll get her!"

Remembering that his friends were still behind him, he yelled over his shoulder, "You guys look after her while I save her!"

And with that, Ichigo pulled out his large hunting knife and began hacking his way through the thorny bushes, which were almost as high as his waist. It was rather slow going, but soon enough he had reached the swan, who seemed to be regaining consciousness.

As the eyes began to open, Ichigo saw that the color of the irises was brown and so knew that the swan who had been wounded was Momo since Orihime and Kisuke had brought the differences in eye color to his attention at their last meeting.

"Take it easy, you're hurt pretty bad. All your sisters are over there and I'm sure they are all worried sick about you."

Ichigo kept talking as he slowly eased Momo into his arms, "I'm going to try and not jostle you around too much, but I need to get you back to Kisuke and Mayuri quickly. I know this is going to hurt but you are going to have to stay awake, ok?"

Despite the fact that he knew that the swan was an actual human who had been transformed, it still took him a little by surprise when the swan nodded in understanding at his words. With that he turned and made his way back through the brambles as quickly and carefully as he possibly could.

After he emerged once again and looked around, Ichigo saw all his friends hovering near Orihime with the exception of Renji.

Before Ichigo could ask, Uryu answered his question saying, "He went after the horses."

Nodding in understanding, Ichigo's gaze finally fell upon Orihime and he was glad that he had refrained from doing so earlier. Her hair was matted with leaves and sticks which had obviously been unconsciously collected as she raced through the forest. Some other evidence of her sprint came in the form of bruises and cuts along her arms and legs. However, it was Orihime's face and especially her eyes that caused Ichigo's anxiety and guilt to increase. Momo had been unintentionally (in a sense) shot by his friends because he had not told them right away what was really going on, so Ichigo naturally blamed himself and he could see from the look in Orihime's eyes that she was doing the same.

However, right at the moment, saving Momo's life was of more importance than comforting his fiancée and so Ichigo said, "As soon as Renji comes back with the horses, I'll carry Momo and you can ride with one of my friends back to Kisuke's. She's alive and I'm sure they can help her there, but we'll have to hurry."

As soon as Ichigo finished with the directions, he heard someone coming their way and grumbling about being the one sent off to find and round up the horses all by himself and how life just wasn't fair sometimes. Ichigo could see that Renji had only brought along four horses with him.

Not waiting for Renji to fully emerge from the forest, Ichigo walked over to his friend saying, "Drop the reigns for a second and hold her," which his friend did without question so as to allow Ichigo to mount his horse before he reached out to take the swan back from Renji.

Turning to the others, Ichigo said, "I'm going ahead and you guys can catch up. She knows where the house is so she will guide you."

Before he left, Ichigo couldn't help but try and offer some kind words to his fiancée and so caught her gaze and said sincerely, "I'm sorry that this happened, but I intend to do everything I can to try and make it right. This isn't your fault and I'm sure everyone else, especially Momo, agrees with me."

Without waiting for any sort of answer, Ichigo turned his horse and began making his way towards the Urahara house. Despite the fact that the trip seemed to take hours, in reality, less than five minutes later, Ichigo came to the house and was met by Jinta and Ururu who were working outside in the garden.

Before either child could offer any sort of greeting, Ichigo called to them, "Go get Kisuke, Mayuri and Yoruichi. She's hurt pretty bad."

They must have noticed the swan cradled in Ichigo's arms, for neither one offered any sort of protest as they raced into the house. As Ichigo brought his horse up to the gate, Mayuri and Yoruichi emerged from the house. Mayuri looked as passive as ever while Yoruichi was clearly quite anxious but trying valiantly to remain calm. Without having to be asked, Mayuri approached the horse and held out his arms to accept Momo's slightly quivering body from Ichigo's outstretched hands. The next moment, Kisuke emerged from the house with Tessai behind him, but both men turned to go back in the house when they saw the others coming inside.

For the next hour or so, the only conversation came from Kisuke and Mayuri as they worked to extract the arrow from Momo's body and tend to the wound. While they kept their voices low so as not to reveal how serious the injury truly was, at one point Ichigo managed to pick up enough of the words to hear that the arrow was dangerously close to piercing some vital organs. However, if for no other reason than for Mayuri to be able to brag later about how amazing he was, the men managed to extract the arrow without causing extra trauma to the transformed girl's body and had successfully wrapped the wound with bandages and special mixtures in order to stave off infection and such.

Now that he was sure Momo would recover slowly but fully, Ichigo allowed himself to relax slightly and turn to see that his friends and Orihime had arrived some time before. The moment Kisuke said she would recover, Orihime burst into a fresh flood of tears and made her way over to where Momo had been laid out on a table. No one made any move to stop her as she sat down next to her sister and laid her head on the table in order to look at her sister's face. The other six swans alighted on the table as well to complete the family circle.

Just as Ichigo began to relax, he suddenly felt a pair of strong arms belonging to Shuhei and Renji grab his own and all but drag him out into the front yard where his other friends stood with expressions that basically said 'We need an explanation and it had better be good.'

"The young woman is Orihime Inoue and the swans are all of her sisters. The one who was hit with the arrow was Momo."

There is such a thing as being too blunt in one's statements…this was not one of those times.

Uryu spoke up first saying, "Yes, I figured as much after that whole fiasco with you panicking when Shuhei decides to shoot a bird which turns out to be a swan, calling the swan 'she' and then later 'Momo', telling the young woman who emerged from the woods to stay with us and that everything would be okay…only an idiot would not be able to figure something like that out."

Not seeming to notice that Keigo looked slightly embarrassed (since he had not figured it out until Ichigo came out and told them and so therefore had just been called an 'idiot' by Uryu…not to say that he hadn't known something was up and that he had never been called an idiot before, but this is Keigo…need I say more?), Uryu went on, "What I can't figure out is why you kept this whole story from us in the first place? I'm even curious to know how you managed to keep it a secret for so long."

Everyone knew what Uryu was actually trying to say with that last statement and so before Ichigo could retort, Mizuiro spoke up, "I guess I can understand somewhat why you might have wanted to keep it a secret and I'm sure that you intended to tell us while we were out, but it is still hard to accept the fact that you kept this from us at all."

Toshiro crossed his arms and said, "We should count ourselves extremely fortunate that Ichigo was with us and that no other hunters have taken it into their head to go hunting for birds."

Chad spoke up for the first time asking, "How did this all happen though? What is going on?"

"For that part of the story, we should probably go back inside and ask Kisuke to tell it," said Ichigo. He had no intention of asking Orihime to relate what happened to her and her sisters right at the moment, so he hoped that there was somewhere where the rest of them could talk in private.

Kisuke understood the situation perfectly and so escorted the young men into the kitchen and immediately after they all sat down, began retelling everything that had happened so far to the best of his knowledge. The entire time Kisuke was talking, no one said a word and when he had finished everyone was silent for a time letting the knowledge of everything that was going on sink in.

Uryu spoke up first, "Well, that is certainly a disconcerting tale. It is made even more so by the fact that there are still far too many unanswered questions in my mind."

Kisuke leaned back and folded his arms saying, "I agree with you there. With this development of Sir Kenpachi's arrest and all the evidence, things are becoming more and more difficult. While I am sure there is some sort of method to all this madness, I just can't seem to find a motive to explain why this is happening."

Before anyone could say anything else, a sound in the doorway caused all the men to turn around. Orihime was standing there with her face still stained with tear tracks and her eyes puffy and red, but her expression was one of gratefulness and peace.

In her hands, she held a note that read 'Thank you all for everything you have done for my sisters and me.'

Standing to his feet, Ichigo went and stood in front of Orihime in order to apologize, but just as he began opening his mouth he felt a soft, gentle hand cover it. Looking down, he saw Orihime shake her head before her eyes began to glisten once again. The next thing he knew, Orihime had leaned against his chest and wrapped her slender arms around him in a way that said she was about ready to fall apart from all the strain. His suspicions were confirmed when he felt her body begin to tremble and tears soaked through his shirtfront.

Despite the fact that she had not spoken a word, Ichigo understood what Orihime was trying to tell him. Throughout this whole ordeal, she had had to be strong and in control of herself for the sake of her sisters. Now she couldn't take it anymore and just needed someone stronger than herself to support her while she completely let go of all her self-control and stress that had been tearing her apart emotionally and mentally. Ichigo's response was to wrap his arms securely around Orihime and lay his cheek against the top of her head in a comforting and supportive way.

Not really knowing why he did, as he held her, Ichigo spoke to Orihime in low tones saying, "Somehow, I'm going to make sure whoever is responsible for all this is brought to justice. You did nothing to deserve this and you most certainly are not to blame."

Almost as an afterthought, Ichigo added, "Please, don't let this break you. I'm here and I'll protect you."

Less than a minute later, Ichigo felt the shaking subside and he knew that Orihime was beginning to put herself back together. Even though he knew this, Ichigo was rather reluctant to release her just yet. He wasn't sure why but even though he had been the one to verbally comfort and hold Orihime, for some reason he felt calmer and more relaxed now as well.

The next moment, Orihime lifted her head to look at Ichigo in a way that related all of her gratitude. Then, before he had any time to react, Orihime gently cupped his face in her hands and pulled him down so that she could tenderly kiss his cheek.

Ten minutes later, Ichigo was on his horse and riding back to the castle, grateful that he was in front of his friends so that he wouldn't have to suffer through their knowing glances and snide remarks about the kiss. He also didn't want them to see how he was fighting to keep the corners of his mouth from drifting up.

When they arrived back at the castle, Ichigo could see there was lots of hustling and bustling going on. He noticed when the rode their horses into the stable that Aizen and his entourage had already come back.

Ever the one to acquire information first, Uryu called over one of the servants and asked what the hubbub was about.

His five word answer took them completely and utterly by surprise.

"Queen Orihime has been saved!"

**Author's Note:**

Apparently, according to me, a couple of days means two...plus ten extra for good measure...I never was very good at math.

Anyway, I'm not going to say much about this chapter but to simply say as always that if something does not make sense or if you have some constructive criticism on things that I can improve about my writing, I would love to hear from you. Also, it is always interesting to hear theories about where the story may be going. Oh, I almost forgot to say that I know geese and swans don't look very much alike, but I figured that with Shuhei looking into the afternoon sun it might be possible to mistake them…I don't know…

Thank you all for your kind comments and help with my writing all this time. You guys are the best!


	13. Lies exposed and questions raised

Transforming Love: Part 13

If the servant had taken a sledgehammer and hit the young men over the heads, Ichigo and his friends could not have been more stunned than they were now.

As usual, it was Uryu who spoke first, asking the servant, "What do you mean when you say Queen Orihime has been saved?"

"Sir Aizen has succeeded in saving her and bringing her back to the castle. There is to be a ball held tonight in her honor and King Isshin has proclaimed that he will be making an important announcement. Is there anything else you require, sir?"

"No, no thank you for the information. You can go about your business."

As the servant scurried away, Uryu, Ichigo and the others turned to face one another with the same expression of bewilderment on their faces.

In a hushed voice, Keigo was the first to break the silence as he asked, "What is going on? How can Aizen have brought back Queen Orihime when-"

He was interrupted when Chad gripped Keigo's shoulder and shook his head firmly.

At Keigo's confused expression, Shuhei spoke softly, saying cryptically, "Even the walls have ears."

Fortunately, Keigo got the hint and wisely shut his mouth as Renji said, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this right now."

And with that, he turned and made his way into the castle while his friends quickly fell into step behind him with the exception of Ichigo. In his case, he lengthened his strides until he had outstripped Renji and led the small entourage of young men towards where he believed everyone might be gathered. They arrived at the throne room and before they opened the large doors, Ichigo could hear voices coming from inside and knew that they were in the right place.

When he opened the doors, his eyes were drawn to the center of the room where five people were standing in a group. He recognized four of the people as his father, King Omaeda, King Byakuya and Sir Aizen while the fifth figure gave him pause for a moment because from the back…it truly looked like Queen Orihime.

As he entered the room, everyone turned to look at Ichigo and his father exclaimed, "My son, what a glorious day! Look who has been restored to us!"

If it had not been for the fact that only an hour before Ichigo had beheld the true Queen Orihime Inoue, when the young woman turned around and he saw her face he would have to say that he could have been deceived. As it was, right away Ichigo could tell that while this woman's hair was almost the same shade as Orihime's used to be (the dark brown had begun to fade during the past few weeks and Orihime's original color was beginning to return), but maybe a shade or two lighter and a little more blonde than the young queen's. Also, even from a distance, Ichigo could see that the woman's eyes were a light shade of blue rather than a light, warm and lively gray. Whoever this person truly was, Aizen had chosen well as she could almost be Orihime's twin sister in height and appearance.

He had only just managed to open his mouth in order to greet the royal persons, when 'Queen Orihime' all but ran up to him and enveloped him in what can only be described as a near fatal embrace. Never before had he known a female who had such immense upper body strength and he was grateful that he hadn't had time to raise his arms in surprised as it likely would have resulted in several cracked and/or bruised ribs in a best case scenario.

And then, just as suddenly as the embrace began, it was over and he heard the young woman say, "Oh, Prince Ichigo! It is so good to see you again! There were times when I was in captivity that I despaired of ever seeing you and your kind family ever again and yet thanks to Sir Aizen…"

Here she paused and gave the indicated person a grateful glance as she finished with, "I have been rescued."

Turning back to Ichigo she said in a low voice as she leaned in towards his ear, "I also heard that you were the one who began organizing search parties to try and find me the day after I was taken. I will have to find a way to repay you as well."

It was at this point that Ichigo was struck with an idea and so whispered back to 'Queen Orihime', "Not all the credit should go to me as Sir Kenpachi was the one who actually alerted me to your disappearance and helped me to organize the search parties…"

From the young woman's startled expression, it was clear that she had not expected such a response or such information to be revealed and it gave Ichigo an opportunity to speak in a louder tone saying, "I am glad to see you returned safe and sound. I cannot imagine what you might have been going through for the past couple of weeks."

Suddenly Uryu spoke up respectfully saying, "It is good to see you restored to us and I trust your sisters have returned as well?"

At this, 'Queen Orihime's' face fell dramatically and Ichigo swore he saw real tears glistening in her eyes as she said softly, "Um…well…"

Confused at the young woman's hesitation, Ichigo's protective instinct kicked in and he asked gently, "What happened?"

When 'Queen Orihime' failed to respond, Sir Aizen said solemnly, "Unfortunately, we arrived too late to save them. Only the queen has managed to survive."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ichigo saw Uryu's expression change ever so slightly, indicating that a few pieces of the puzzle had just now become clear to his friend. Unfortunately, Ichigo would have to wait until later before he could find out what Uryu had figured out, so he turned his attention back to the young woman in front of him.

He was surprised to see an expression of real remorse and sadness on the young woman's face, as if she really was pained by the 'loss' of 'her sisters'. While he was not always the best at communicating with other people, Ichigo had always had a very keen sense of reading people's true emotions. There had been times when his friends had been fooled by others, but Ichigo had always known when someone was telling the truth and when they were lying. Ichigo could tell that despite the fact that this woman was pretending to be Orihime and most likely doing it on Sir Aizen's orders, she was not doing it out of hate or spite for the young queen.

For the time being, the thought that despite the fact that it had not been announced to any of the other royal guests, Sir Aizen, his own father and even some of the guards knew that Queen Orihime was his fiancée. While he didn't have to pretend to be in love or anything, Ichigo knew that he had to show more emotion than he normally did…after all, from everyone else's point of view for the past few weeks he had been ceaselessly searching to find Orihime so that indicated that he was at least somewhat attached to her. Even though he knew the truth behind everything, he couldn't let on that he did, especially with Sir Aizen looking at him intently.

However, when Ichigo looked back at the young woman's face, it wasn't hard to conjure up some feelings of sympathy to allow himself to gently reach down, take her slender hands in his own and say sincerely, "I am sorry. I can't even imagine what you must be going through right now."

At his words, the young woman closed her eyes as one tear managed to spill over and trail down her cheek as she said in a barely audible voice, "Thank you."

About a half hour later, Ichigo and his friends exited the throne room and headed in the general direction of the training grounds. King Isshin had informed them that there would be a ball held in honor of 'Queen Orihime's' safe return and before Ichigo had left, his father had pulled him aside as said quietly that they had something fairly important to discuss later.

When they reached the training grounds, Ichigo turned around to face Uryu, crossed his arms over his chest and demanded, "All right. Spill it."

Crossing his own arms, Uryu closed his eyes and sighed, "You know, it really wouldn't hurt you to learn to be more polite to people, especially your own friends. And besides, how am I supposed to know exactly what you are referring to if you don't tell me?"

Glaring at his friend, Ichigo repeated, "Spill it. You know what I mean."

Uryu held a brief staring contest with Ichigo before he finally relented saying, "I would have hoped you would have been able to put two and two together yourself, but apparently yo-"

Toshiro cut across Uryu in an annoyed tone saying, "Enough with the bickering. Let's get to the point. Everyone here knows that the woman in there is an imposter. The question now is, why?"

Uryu looked miffed and huffed at Toshiro, "I thought that would have been obvious as well."

Surprisingly enough, it was Renji and Keigo who simultaneously stepped in to break up their nit-picking friends.

Renji shouted, "Oi! Knock it off!"

Keigo was next, exclaiming, "We're not getting anywhere with all this banter and I really want to know what's going on around here so can someone just come out and explain what in the world is going on?"

Mizuiro calmly interjected with, "Thank you for bringing us back to order, you two. What Uryu was probably going to tell everyone is that now we know why Sir Aizen had Sir Kenpachi arrested."

Everyone except Toshiro and Uryu looked at Mizuiro with blank expressions. The others looked at each other, trying to decide which person among them was willing to be ridiculed for not being able to 'put two and two together'.

Fortunately, Toshiro took up the explanation, stating plainly, "Despite the fact that we met the real Queen Orihime and her sisters on the night of the ball, we were all wearing masks and so Sir Aizen was obviously banking on that fact when he brought in this imposter. If it wasn't for the fact that we already know where the real queen and her sisters are hiding, we likely would have fallen for the ruse."

Ichigo impatiently started scratching the back of his head as he began, "I know that already, but what does tha-"

Toshiro cut him off asking a question, "Who is the only person, according to Sir Aizen's knowledge, who would be able to see through Sir Aizen's plan and know that the woman in there is an imposter?"

Understanding began to dawn in their faces as Renji spoke aloud what they had all just figured out, "Sir Kenpachi is completely loyal to Queen Orihime and he would be the only one who would be able to recognize the real queen."

Keigo asked, "What about the guards who went with Sir Aizen?"

Toshiro shrugged his shoulders saying, "They must know his plan or at least enough of it and are loyal to whatever they think he is trying to do. As for the woman…"

Ichigo spoke up, "The woman is not out to harm Orihime. I think Aizen has convinced her that Orihime and her sisters are really dead and that by becoming the queen, she is helping some sort of good cause."

Everyone looked at Ichigo and then each other before Shuhei asked, "What makes you say that?"

Ichigo said simply, "She almost cried."

The others seemed satisfied with that explanation.

After a short pause, Keigo asked the next most obvious question.

"So, what now?"

**Author's Note:**

Ok, that took a lot less time than I thought it would...it could also be because it is somewhat shorter than the other parts...oh well...

Anyway, I'm sure most of you have figured this out by now but the imposter happens to be Rangiku. Even though in the manga and anime, Rangiku is slightly taller than Orihime, I don't think there is that noticable of a difference unless you had the two girls standing right next to each other. Also, despite the fact that Rangiku is my 'Odile' character, she will not be evil. Rather, as you have probably guessed, she is being manipulated by my 'Rothbart' character.

So, I know how I want this story to end, but there is one thing about this next part that I'm not entirely sure how I want it to play out and so would like to hear your opinions on. If you know the story of Swan Lake, you know that there is a ball sequence where the prince (usually named Siegfried) has been fooled by Rothbart and Odile into thinking that he is really proposing marriage to his true love Odette. Outside, Odette is seen flitting from window to window trying to attract Siegfried's attention to let him know that he is making a mistake.

I will let you know that during the ball, Ichigo will 'propose' to 'Queen Orihime' despite the fact that he knows the woman is not his real fiancee. Here is my question: should I have Ichigo go and explain what is going on to Orihime and ask her to stay away or maybe ask her to be there? Or should I have one of Ichigo's friends send Orihime some sort of letter asking her to come? Should I have her come and see what is going on and think Ichigo betrayed her or something? Or do any of you have a different idea for how I can develop this? I am open to any and all ideas.

I am hoping to have this story wrapped up before the end of the month so that I can move on to other story ideas, so stay tuned for all those fun times.

As always, hope you are enjoying this journey with me!


	14. Beginning of the end

Transforming Love: Part 14

It was late afternoon and only a half hour previously, there had been a visitor from the castle to the Urahara residence for the second time that day. When she had heard the knock, Orihime couldn't help the thought that it might be Ichigo standing there and the fluttering of her heart was quickly slowed when she answered the door to admit Lord Shuhei.

He apparently didn't miss Orihime's excitement drop as he smiled sympathetically and said, "Ichigo would have come himself be it through hell or high water, but it seems as though all hell has broken loose in the castle during our absence earlier and his father wants to discuss something with his son that will prevent 'the waters' from rising any further over their heads."

Orihime couldn't help but grin at Shuhei's choice of expression and explanation before she beckoned him inside and looked at him with an expression that said 'What happened?'

Shuhei sighed and rubbed the back of his head as he said, "As I said, basically the whole castle is in turmoil."

Holding out a large note, Shuhei said, "Even though he couldn't tell you in person, Ichigo really wanted to be the one to explain what is going on."

Taking the note and opening it, Orihime read:

Orihime,

As unlikely as this sounds, in the past few hours a lot has happened and before tomorrow hopefully certain things will come to light.

It seems as if Aizen has made his move and at this point we still don't know what he is up to, but if we play our cards right, there may be a way to stop him before things get even more out of hand.

When we arrived back at the castle, a young woman was pretending to be you and said that while she had been rescued, the rest of the Inoue family was killed. I don't know for sure, but I think Aizen has convinced her to pose as you by telling some sort of story about how you and your sisters are really dead and how she must become you in order to save Rikka or something like that.

So now we know that Sir Kenpachi was arrested because he was the only person who could foil Aizen's plan and say this young woman is an imposter. There were soldiers who went with Aizen, and they've probably been told the same story as the other woman.

There is one more thing I think you should know. The only people here at the castle who know there is an imposter are my friends and I, so my father believes that my fiancée has returned. As a result, he pulled me aside earlier and asked me to make it official at a ball we are going to be holding tonight.

This is all happening so fast and so I completely understand if this news catches you off-guard. I'm still trying to process all that has happened as I am writing this down and it still makes my head hurt trying to understand what is going on.

Somehow, we will find a way to expose Aizen's treachery and I hope it won't be too much longer until you can come home with your sisters.

We will find a way to get through this together. I promise.

Sincerely yours,

Ichigo Kurosaki

Carefully folding the letter, Orihime quickly walked over to the table where she picked up a pen and two sheets of paper and wrote out a reply to Ichigo and a quick note to Shuhei that read 'Thank you so much for bringing me Ichigo's letter.'

Shuhei's response was to smile gently and say, "It was my pleasure."

Then he sighed deeply and said, "I should probably be getting back to the castle and I'm guessing that I am taking Ichigo a response."

Orihime smiled in return and handed him the letter.

A few minutes later, Orihime stood in the doorway waving farewell to Shuhei as he rode away before she clasped her hands in front of her and gazed off into the distance.

For the past few weeks, Orihime, Kisuke, Yoruichi, Soi Fon, Mayuri and a few more of the Urahara's friends had been formulating a plan to flush out Aizen. After receiving Ichigo's note, Orihime knew that tonight would be the best chance they would ever get to pull it off.

Even though she would not be doing this on her own, at the time they had been discussing possible plans, Orihime had insisted that her sisters were not told about it until after it was all over. There was no guarantee that this would work and Orihime wanted her sisters to be safe if she wasn't able to make this work. Now, it also had to apply to Ichigo.

One way or another, it would all end tonight. 

**Author's Note:**

Again, this was really short and I'm sorry about that. And as it said at the end, we are coming to the end of the story, so enjoy this journey with me as it comes to its final destination!


	15. The game ends

Transforming Love: Part 15

Ichigo squirmed in his seat at the banquet uncomfortably as he tried not to cover his ears and groan in embarrassment. While his dining companion was most definitely not the worst he had ever had, at this point she was starting to quickly climb the list towards the top.

'Queen Orihime' was spilling all the details of just how hard it was to get dressed for a fancy occasion such as this. Certainly nothing vulgar or distasteful…but most certainly not something Ichigo cared to know about.

"I tell you they just don't make corsets like they used to. There were a few times when the servants were pulling those cords that I felt sure something was going to snap and I was going to get a very nasty cut or gash somewhere unpleasant."

Unfortunately, Ichigo never did have a good sense of timing and so had been on the verge of swallowing a mouthful of water when this comment had been made, causing him to nearly spew the water from his mouth. Only his lightning reflexes and thoroughly ingrained manners prevented such a catastrophe from occurring.  
>And still the young woman went on.<p>

"But that is nothing, nothing I say in comparison with the slipshod way in which some people sew stockings and garters."

Over half an hour ago, when they had first sat down to eat, Ichigo had finally given up trying to fit a word in edgewise when this young woman was talking because it was IMPOSSIBLE. No matter what he tried, from coughing loudly to get her attention to attempting to respond to her comments to just barely managing to restrain himself from tripping her to see what would happen, nothing had worked. She was still talking nonstop.

When they had begun eating, Ichigo had thought that maybe finally he would be able to say something, anything, but he had been wrong. Somehow (he wasn't entirely sure if she did this on purpose or not), she took the tiniest of bits from her food and managed to unconsciously time them for when Ichigo was also chewing on something. In that way, she had finished, swallowed and begun again before Ichigo had a chance to finish chewing what was in his mouth.

Not all of the woman's incessant chatter had been frivolous nonsense and she seemed to be very intelligent, but he found he had an extremely hard time just sitting and listening the entire time.

The worst of it was that no one else seemed to know or care about his predicament. Right next to 'Queen Orihime' sat King Omaeda and on Ichigo's other side sat his own father, but for whatever reason, they seemed to be engrossed in their own conversations. Ichigo's friends were seated at a completely different table, so they could be of absolutely no help to him.

"I had a pair of stockings that ran a hole in them the second time I wore them, what do you think of that? And they were ones that I had specifically chosen to match with a number of gowns I was planning to wear that season! Oh, the lengths one will go to be known as stylish and beautiful!"

'Oh, what I wouldn't do to make this night go faster,' thought Ichigo wearily.

When the time finally came for the dancing to commence, Ichigo once again deluded himself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, the young woman would not be able to talk and dance and look at the people around her all at once. But women usually have a natural knack for multi-tasking and so the constant flow of words kept flowing.

All of a sudden as they were dancing, 'Queen Orihime' declared in a barely audible voice, "All right, I think we're safe now."

The only thing Ichigo could think to do was gawk at the young woman as she went on, "We don't have much time, so I'll get straight to the point: what is going on?"

Ichigo had no idea how to react. In a matter of moments, the young woman he had been dancing with and who had been chattering nonstop for hours in a manner that every once in a while had made him want to roll into a ball and cover his ears was now giving him the most intense stare-down he might have ever experienced.

As his brain fought to catch up from this sudden change, Ichigo's mouth somehow managed to form the words, "What do you mean?"

'Queen Orihime' rolled her eyes in acute irritation and impatience as she demanded, "What do I mean? I'm asking how you know that I'm not really Hime, why you made that comment about Kenpachi when he is supposed to be a traitor and why you don't seem to trust Sosuke!"

When Ichigo paused, gave the young woman a wary glance and then opened his mouth to deny any knowledge about her questions, she cut him off stating, "My name is Rangiku Matsumoto. Hime, Tatsuki, Rukia, Momo, Isane, Chizuru, Nemu and Yachiru are my cousins. Anything else you would like to know before you answer my questions?"

"They're your cousins?"

If Ichigo didn't know any better, he might have claimed that he could see a faint trail of steam wafting out of Rangiku's ears as she whispered furiously, "I heard you might be a little dense, but I never expected to find a man who makes rocks look like geniuses! Pull yourself together and tell me what's going on!"

At Rangiku's insult, Ichigo glared back at her and retorted with, "Look, how do I know you are who you say you are? And why should I trust you?"

"I told you who I really am and it's your choice whether you believe me or not. I need to know if Hime and the others are still alive. Well, are they?"

Looking into Rangiku's eyes and seeing her brash attitude and irritation melt away to reveal a hurting heart, Ichigo decided to take the plunge and said, "They're all alive and well. I just saw them earlier today before I came back and met you."

For a few moments, Rangiku didn't react. Then her eyes began to shimmer and she buried her face in Ichigo's shoulder.

At first Ichigo couldn't react until he heard Rangiku's muffled voice say, "I'm sorry. Just give me a few moments."

When she finally composed herself, Rangiku had a true smile crossing her face as she said, "Sosuke told me that you and Orihime were engaged but that it wasn't official quite yet. I'm guessing that you will take care of that later on tonight?"

Ichigo nodded automatically before the whole of Rangiku's ploy made sense. Thinking back over the evening, Ichigo could only hope that he had looked somewhat engaged and interested in what Rangiku, who had been playing the part of his soon-to-be fiancée, had been saying in order to make the ploy more effective. Even though he hadn't known the real Queen Orihime for more than two days according to most people's knowledge, in order for them to fool at least Sir Aizen, Ichigo needed to act like a man who was about to propose marriage to a young woman he cared about.

Allowing a small smile to cross his face, Ichigo replied, "I hope you are a good actress because you really are not supposed to know anything about that."

Rangiku gave Ichigo a coy smile and a wink as she said, "Just you wait."

When the dance ended, Ichigo was surprised when he felt an urgent hand on his arm and Uryu's voice say from behind him, "Don't look now, but I just saw-"

Unfortunately, before Uryu could finish his sentence, a loud blast from the trumpets directed everyone's gaze towards the front of the ball room where King Isshin was standing atop a raised dais.

The king had his arms spread wide and a smile on his face as wide as his arm span as he announced, "Today has been a day full of unexpected surprises and tonight will be no exception."

Gesturing to the room at large, he said, "It wasn't long ago that four countries came together in order to create an alliance of land and resources, forging bonds of friendship that will last hopefully until the end of time. However, tonight, there will be another alliance formed that is of quite a different sort."

Dropping his hands to his sides, King Isshin finished with, "In order to create this alliance, I graciously ask my son, Prince Ichigo Kurosaki, to join me."

Everyone turned to watch Prince Ichigo make his way up onto the dais to join his father. Before he walked forward, Ichigo had turned to give Uryu a meaningful look that said he would be back later and would want to hear the rest of Uryu's news, whatever it was.

Looking out over the guests, who looked at him with expressions of curiosity and expectation, Ichigo began, "Even though this decision might seem hasty to some here, let me assure all of you that I did not make this choice lightly, but do feel very strongly about this alliance."

Running a hand through his hair, Ichigo closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was actually talking to the real Orihime as he said, "Queen Orihime, would you consent to take my hand in marriage?"

He kept his eyes closed and bowed his head as he waited a few moments for 'Orihime's' reaction. Just like it had been since the beginning of the evening, Rangiku's reaction as she was playing the part of Orihime was like nothing Ichigo could have possibly imagined.

There were a few moments of silence until Ichigo looked up when he heard Rangiku ask, "Are you serious?"

Understandably, Ichigo's reaction was to imitate a fish as his mouth opened and closed, trying to form some sort of response to this startling development.

Thankfully, Rangiku didn't keep Ichigo in the dark for long as she suddenly brightened and squealed as she all but ran to the dais and pulled Ichigo into another near bone-crushing hug. Trying to keep his face from grimacing, Ichigo braced himself for impact and tried to look relieved that his marriage proposal had been accepted.

Ichigo nearly sagged with relief when he heard polite cheering from the crowd at this unexpected turn of events. They apparently had bought the entire act. However, Ichigo swept his gaze around the gathering trying to locate Aizen's face to see whether he seemed to be buying into the act as well. Aizen was nowhere to be seen at the moment.

Despite the fact that Aizen was absent at the moment, Ichigo found himself bombarded by the guests wishing 'the happy couple' all their best wishes for the future. This went on for what seemed like forever, when in reality it probably only lasted about half an hour, until King Isshin called for the newly betrothed couple to lead everyone in a dance.

When Ichigo was finally able to detach himself in a polite manner from Rangiku under the guise of allowing her to chatter with some of the female nobles, he immediately scanned the room to find Uryu. It wasn't long before he spotted the young man standing with the rest of his friends against the far wall. Even from a distance Ichigo could see that they were having a rather intense discussion.

As he walked up, his friends turned to look at him as Ichigo asked, "What's going on?"

* * *

><p>The kingdom of Tensho was one of the border countries on the continent of Society of Souls so that half of its land was surrounded by the countries Rikka and Zenbonzakura while the other half jutted out into the Getsuga Ocean. Tensho's castle was built on a cliff that gave a magnificent view of the ocean from just about all directions.<p>

Not long after the ball had commenced, Orihime had arrived at the castle. Urahara and Yoruichi had given her instructions on how to approach the castle without being seen by any of the guards and Orihime resolved that if everything went according to plan when it was all over she would make Urahara tell Ichigo about how he could tighten his security.

She had watched the couples whirling and twirling around the dance floor in all their finery for a time before she had managed to locate Ichigo. Because of Ichigo's letter, Orihime had been prepared and so she had not been too startled to see her cousin, Rangiku, dancing with him. The two of them seemed to be getting along well and Orihime couldn't help but feel a pang as she wished fervently that she was the one actually dancing with the prince. That the only thing she would be worrying about at this time was not stepping on her very handsome dance partner's feet.

After a time, Orihime saw King Isshin stand on the dais and all that happened after that with Ichigo's 'proposal', Rangiku's reaction and acceptance and then the fawning reaction from the rest of the guests. Orihime fought hard against another and stronger tug on her heart.

Then she saw him and all other thoughts were promptly set aside. Orihime knew that he had seen her as well and so she deliberately turned and made her way away from the castle and towards the edge of the cliff looking out on the Getsuga Ocean.

Orihime did not walk quickly, but it did not take her long to reach her destination. The edge of the cliff was about 10 feet away and she closed her eyes and allowed the ocean breeze to cool her face and calm her nerves.

Even though she didn't hear his approach, Orihime sensed him coming and decided to allow him to make the first move.

Aizen's voice was low as he began, "Well, this certainly is a pleasant surprise, Your Highness. I wasn't expecting you to come out of hiding nearly this quickly."

Orihime turned and gave Aizen a bemused expression, to which Aizen chuckled and said, "If I had to guess, you weren't expecting me to confess quite so suddenly to knowing that you were hiding from me."

Shrugging his shoulders, he said, "What can I say? I like to get to the point. One of my pet peeves is when people beat about the bush."

Looking directly at Orihime, Aizen continued, "I know you don't trust me. I know Kenpachi and your sisters don't trust me. I know none of you have trusted me ever since King Naruhito's death."

Taking a few steps forward, he went on, "Now, I know that your dashing fiancé and his friends don't trust me and are trying to find some way to bring me to justice."

Aizen stopped about two paces away from Orihime and waited for a few minutes before he asked, "So, what will you do now? You failed to catch me off guard by your sudden reappearance, so right now I have the upper hand. It's your move."

Orihime was not at all patronized or flustered by Aizen's subtle challenge, but she took a few moments to clear her throat before she replied in a voice that was soft and raspy from lack of use.

"I only want you to answer one question: why?"

Aizen's eyes widened slightly and his mouth quirked upwards in an impressed grin as he said, "Well, well, well. This is certainly a pleasant surprise."

He crossed his arms in front of his chest and cocked his head as he said, "I don't want to seem rude by answering your question with another question, but can you be a little more specific, please?"

"Why are you doing this? Why did you have to involve my sisters?"

Clearing his throat, Aizen replied, "Because of you."

Orihime stared at Aizen and barely managed to whisper, "What?"

Aizen chuckled softly and said, "I don't mean that in a menacing way. Your family didn't suppress mine. I never hated your father because of some injustice I felt he had done to me. When you refused my marriage proposal, I didn't immediately begin to plan your destruction. I also am not trying to get rid of you in order to take over Rikka."

Spreading his arms wide, Aizen went on, "So, what's left? What possible motive could I have?"

Dropping his arms, Aizen said, "The answer is simple. I am doing this because you fascinate me.

"You have everything. Beauty, character, a loving family and subjects, wealth, prestige, intelligence and a special kind of strength. You also have a kind of…purity and radiance that I have never found in another person."

Aizen put his hands behind his back and began to walk around Orihime as he continued, "Watching you grow into a young woman who had everything, I couldn't help but wonder: what would happen if she lost everything? How much tragedy could she bear before she finally fell apart?

"And so, after the sudden and tragic death of King Naruhito, I found myself in a position to become closer to you and observe you a lot easier."

At the mention of her father's name, Orihime spun around, but before she could demand an explanation, Aizen said casually, "My hand did not take the life of our beloved late king. However, if I had to guess, I would say that he slipped away peacefully in the night as he slept."

Shaking his head, Aizen said, "As for a possible reason behind such an act, it might have been due to the fact that a certain person said too much in the king's presence about how they were…fascinated by one of the king's daughters. Not in a lewd or psychopathic way, but I think the late king's instinct told him that the person in question should be distanced from his precious family.

"Also, how could I pass up such a perfect opportunity to initiate my plan? I had to see how you dealt with such a devastating blow and I was quite pleased with the results. You were rather broken for a time, but you quickly pulled yourself together for the sake of your country because it was your duty to become queen. In addition to submitting to your sense of duty, your sisters also were there to comfort you and share in your sadness. When it became too much for you to bear alone, your sisters came alongside you to help you up again."

Aizen carelessly waved his hand in order to ward away a bug as he went on, "So, at that time, I knew that your greatest weaknesses were if anyone threatened your family or your people. Those were important pieces, but still there seemed to be something lacking, so I delayed going into the final stage of my plan."

Turning his gaze back on Orihime, Aizen said, "Eventually, I decided that before I broke you completely, I wanted to have you fall in love. Long story short, Prince Ichigo was the perfect choice. And in conclusion, everything has gone according to my plan."

Lifting up her chin proudly, Orihime stated, "No you haven't. My sisters are still alive and safe from you. Ichigo and the others are not under your control and it is only a matter of time before you are brought to justice."

Aizen smiled and took a step towards her as he said, "You are quite wrong in that regard. I have yet to make my final move. And actually, you will be the one to decide how this game will end."

At Orihime's questioning look, Aizen answered by saying, "I know that you and your sisters have been hiding in a quaint little house where the residents just so happen to be working on an antidote to fully transform your sisters back into humans forever. However, in all probability, it will take them months or even years before they can finally create an antidote of that caliber."

Aizen smiled as he said, "On the other hand, I happen to have just such an antidote in my possession."

He waited expectantly for Orihime to say something and when she failed to take the bait, Aizen went on, "As you have probably guessed, there is a catch. I am going to give you two choices. One, you can choose to save your sisters and return them to their true forms. If you do so, the life of your dear fiancé will be forfeit as a result and because of the evidence stacked against you, you and your sisters will be found responsible for his death and lose control of your kingdom and people as well."

He paused for a moment to take in Orihime's horrified expression before he finished with, "Your second option is to marry your prince and rule over the countries of Tensho and Rikka alongside him. By making that choice, however, your sisters will remain as swans. They will remain so because all persons capable of helping them will be taken care of."

Clasping his hands in front of his face, Aizen said, "Now, you might be thinking that the second choice would be best because as long as you told Ichigo everything that he would be able to help you save your sisters and the Urahara's, but just think about it. If you don't play by the rules of my game, then why should I?"

Once again, Aizen's threat was completely clear. It appeared as if Orihime had no way out.

Aizen finished with the sentence, "It's your move…Your Highness."

Before Orihime could respond, she heard an all too familiar and beloved voice calling her name.

* * *

><p>Uryu had wasted no time in telling Ichigo the moment the prince was in earshot, "The queen is here."<p>

At first Ichigo had not known how to respond, until he managed to ask, "Where?"

Toshiro nodded towards the large windows saying, "She was outside when the dancing began, but she hid well so I don't think anyone else saw her."

Uryu corrected, "Not quite. When you went up to 'propose', Aizen slipped away."

Ichigo needed no more explanations, but simply said, "If we all leave, it would probably look suspicious. If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, come out."

His friends nodded in understanding and Ichigo left without another word.

As he walked outside in search of his real fiancée and the person who had been the source of all her suffering, Ichigo only had one thought on his mind. Find Orihime and protect her from Aizen. Right now, he didn't care why she had come or how she thought she could take on Aizen alone; he would figure that out later. All that mattered was finding Orihime and keeping her safe.

It didn't take Ichigo long to find them. As he approached, Ichigo saw that Orihime had her back to him and Aizen was facing Orihime. The expression on Aizen's face was one that Ichigo couldn't quite read in the strong moonlight, but that didn't keep him from wanted to pound it off the creep's face.

"Orihime!"

Both Aizen and Orihime turned their attention on Ichigo as he closed the last bit of distance between them and firmly placed himself in front of Orihime.

"What's going on?"

Aizen sighed and answered, "I would think that would be obvious. We are having a conversation."

Ichigo frowned and asked, "About what exactly?"

Aizen looked thoughtful and said, "Hmm, different things. Maybe the queen herself would rather enlighten you."

Closing the distance between them, Ichigo growled, "You leave Orihime alone. I know what you've done and you are done messing with Orihime's life."

Aizen's expression was one of extreme confusion as he asked, "Wait a minute, what have I done to offend you, Your Highness?"

"Don't give me that! You heard me say that you are done messing around with Orihime's life! With my fiancée's life!"

Raising his hands in defense, Aizen asked, "But how am I messing with her life?"

Clenching his fists, Ichigo ground out, "Why you-"

"Enough!"

Both men turned to see Orihime standing a short distance away from them. The wind had picked up slightly and it blew her long hair about her face and frame in a way that made her look quite stunning.

With her gaze on Aizen, Orihime stated firmly, "I am not a pawn to be used in your twisted game."

Turning her attention to Ichigo, Orihime said in a softer voice, "You weren't supposed to come out."

She closed her eyes and whispered, "I'm sorry, Ichigo."

Before Ichigo could ask what in the world she was going on about, Orihime did the last thing he ever expected her to do.  
>She turned and walked off of the cliff.<p>

For a few moments, Ichigo couldn't move. Then, without really realizing what he was doing, he raced to the cliff edge and saw Orihime's white gown clad body falling through the air, her hair whipping about her head. She looked like an angel falling from heaven.

Then her body hit the water and was lost below the surface.

At the exact moment that the body struck the ocean, Ichigo turned and sprinted towards the rock walkway that would take him down to the beach that bordered the ocean. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice was saying that if he hurried, maybe there was still time. Maybe he could save her.

Nothing else mattered. He had to get to that beach.

**Author's Note:**

This really has been my plan all along for how this story would turn out. I hope Aizen's reason for doing all of this actually makes sense and if not...I tried. He is hard to get right.

As for Orihime's counterplan...just please know that I did it for a good reason (hopefully) and I can only hope you won't be too upset in the way I have chosen to develop this story...


	16. The aftermath

Transforming Love: Part 16

The moment he reached the sandy beach, Ichigo raced to the shoreline and start to look for any sign of Orihime. Finally, he spotted a bit of white floating in the water and immediately swam out in that direction. Upon reaching the spot, Ichigo found Orihime's peaceful form floating on the water's surface. He wrapped a strong arm around her chest and successfully brought her back to the shore in order to inspect her for injuries.

When he finally laid Orihime's still form on the sand, he saw that she was not breathing. Not really knowing what else to do and only acting instinctively, Ichigo thought that maybe he just had to help Orihime get the water out of her system and then she would be fine. He just needed to clear her airway. So he tried a motion he had seen and used on people who were choking and so he held Orihime against his chest and pushed against Orihime's ribcage in an upward motion using his clenched hands.

After a time, Ichigo began trying to coax Orihime back to consciousness as he was still working on her ribcage, saying, "C'mon Orihime. We have to get the water out of your lungs. I can't do all the work myself."

As he kept going, Ichigo's conversation changed and he said, "You'd better wake up soon because you have a lot of explaining to do. What were you thinking pulling a stunt like that? You know you could have be-"

He stopped, refused to let his mind go in that direction and said instead, "Well, anyway, you have to wake up because your sisters are waiting for you. Now that you've come out of hiding, I guess we have no choice but to reveal the truth. We'll have to fetch your sisters from Urahara's place and I'm going to leave all the explaining to you."

As he had been talking, Ichigo's hands had slowed until they were not moving anymore. Despite the fact that every fiber of his being refused to believe it was happening, he knew his senses were not deceiving him. Orihime's body was growing colder by the minute.

Trying one final, desperate measure, Ichigo laid Orihime on the ground and covered her mouth with his, blowing air into her body. If she couldn't seem to manage to get air into her lungs on her own strength, then he would do it for her. Again and again, he blew air in and then pressed firmly down on Orihime's chest in order to force the air out and again in a cycle that he knew in his head would be completely useless. His heart, though, held onto hope a little while longer.

That hope, however, quickly dwindled and faded away. Ichigo had to face the reality that he had lost her. He had failed once again.

He was kneeling beside Orihime's body and despite the fact that he rose up from the sand, Ichigo's back was bent in defeat.

Even to himself, Ichigo's thoughts were a mystery. Right now, in this moment, he could not begin to comprehend what was happening to him.

Little more than a month ago, he had never even heard of Queen Orihime. She had first entered his life as a completely unknown person who could be forced upon him. He remembered how he had raged at his father for setting up the match behind Ichigo's back. Never in his wildest dreams could Ichigo ever have imagined that such an action on Aizen's part and then his father's part could have such an impact on his life.

Thinking back over the time he had spent with Orihime at the ball, to when he thought she had been captured or possibly killed, how he had become attracted to a young peasant woman named Zhinu only to later find out she was actually betrothed…all those events had happened in a matter of weeks. If he thought about everything rationally, he could count on fewer than ten fingers the amount of times he had interacted with Orihime.

Yes, he had determined to make her his betrothed and marry her one day, but there were plenty of people who married for political, social or economic reasons and who never saw each other until the day of the wedding. In those kinds of marriages, it was not impossible to form strong attachments or even grow to love one's spouse over time, it certainly was not normal. Also, from what he could tell, such devotion was not something that was cultivated over a matter of weeks and days, but rather of months and years.

Then he thought of his father's story and how King Isshin had proposed to Ichigo's mother, Masaki, a mere day after the two had met. Even though Ichigo had always rolled his eyes when his father spoke of 'finding true love at first sight', now, as he knelt next to the lifeless body of his betrothed, Ichigo began to understand.

At first, before he had actually met the young queen, Ichigo had resolved or more accurately resigned himself to marry Queen Orihime. On the night of the ball, Ichigo had been intrigued and interested by the honest, open and all around beautiful young woman who was to be his partner for the evening. Then, when he finally discovered her again after all her royal trappings had been stripped away, Ichigo had been able to come to know the true Orihime Inoue. He had witnessed her experiencing some of her lowest moments and had felt his heart ache with hers. She had turned to him in those moments and he had willingly offered her his shoulder to cry on and his arms to support her when she couldn't hold herself together any longer. Orihime's radiant smile and chaste kiss had left him with a desire to be on the receiving end of those demonstrations of affection a lot more in the future.

He had taken for granted the fact that they would eventually marry. That he would exchange vows and become one flesh and one soul with her. He had never doubted the fact that he would have her by his side for years to come as they ruled over their countries together. He had allowed himself the license to imagine what married life might possibly be like with her. How they might start a family and watch their children grow up and find their own path and life-long mate.

Now, as he gazed into Orihime's face, his heart gave a lurch as he realized that all of his plans would never happen. He would never be able to create new memories with this gentle woman. He would be forced to replay the brief times they had shared over a matter of weeks for years to come in his mind and drive himself near crazy wondering why it had to turn out like this.

Then he turned his gaze up towards the face of the cliff and his gaze and resolve hardened.

That man would take responsibility for what he had done to Orihime and Ichigo would make sure that he paid dearly for all the pain that he had inflicted upon her.

* * *

><p>When Ichigo finally made his way back up the rock path bearing Orihime's limp form in his arms, his gaze immediately began searching for Aizen's loathsome form. Apparently, fifteen minutes had expired because all of Ichigo's friends surrounded the tall man's frame and appeared to be interrogating him. Along with his friends, Ichigo saw that Orihime's transformed sisters were also demanding information from Aizen.<p>

Out of the corner of his eyes, Ichigo could see other people gathered near the ballroom door that lead outside, but Ichigo chose to ignore them for the time being. He also was not the least bit curious as to how or why the Inoue sisters were here in their human forms. His entire focus was on the man everyone wanted to talk to at the moment.

"Aizen!"

Ichigo's bellow caught everyone's attention and all eyes turned in his direction. For a few moments nothing happened, and then Ichigo could hear people begin to stir and whisper in astonishment.

Walking slowly towards his adversary, Ichigo went on, "Look! Take a good look at what you have done! You did this!"

Holding Orihime more securely against himself, Ichigo demanded, "Why? Tell me why she would do something like this? What did you tell or do to her that would make her believe that taking her own life was her only choice?"

At Ichigo's words, Rukia turned on Aizen and threw herself at him. She latched herself onto Aizen's suit and seemed to be attempting to shake the life out of him. Aizen didn't retaliate, he only lifted up his arms defensively as he legs and feet shifted in order to right himself now that he had been thrown off balance.

Renji, Toshiro and Momo jumped forward in order to wrench Rukia away from Aizen and keep both the princess and the suspect from reeling any closer to the edge.

Renji shouted at the struggling Rukia in his arms, "Quit it! Do you want to die?"

This only fueled Rukia's rage and she screamed, "I don't care as long as he goes with me! He killed her! He killed my sister!"

Rukia's hysterical screaming was suddenly cut off when Nemu slapped her cheek sharply.

There were a few moments of silence before Nemu spoke in her low voice, "That's enough Rukia. Killing Aizen will not bring her back."

Isane walked in front of Nemu and gently clasped Rukia's face as she said softly, "Also, if you died trying to avenge Orihime then the rest of us would have to mourn for you both. Don't do that to us, please."

Even though Ichigo could not see the young woman's face, he knew because Renji let Rukia go that she had calmed down.

The next moment, several soldiers made their way through the group in order to apprehend Aizen. He made no protest as he was locked in manacles and led away towards the back of the castle where the dungeons were.

Before he was escorted away, however, Ichigo heard Aizen say almost to himself, "I never knew she had that kind of strength. She exceeded all my assumptions and expectations."

When Aizen was out of sight, Ichigo allowed the weight in his arms and heart finally pull him to the ground. Aizen had lost and Orihime had won. However, it had been at a terrible cost.

Hearing a noise above him, Ichigo raised his eyes and saw Orihime's sisters standing in front of him and looking down at their lifeless sister. No one spoke for a time.

Chizuru spoke up first saying, "You idiot."

Ichigo knew the distraught girl was not talking to him as Chizuru's knees buckled and she cried softly, "You idiot. What were you thinking? What made you think that killing yourself would do anyone any good?"

Tatsuki rebuked Chizuru saying, "She was trying to protect us. Orihime knew that Aizen was coming after her and so he would use us as leverage in order to control her. As much as I loathe her choice, she did this for us. I would do the same thing if I was in her position and if it meant keeping the rest of you safe."

The sound of quiet mirth was quite startling as no one had expected such a sound during this time of mourning. Momo was laughing.

"You two are completely impossible. Was it really only a month ago that Orihime read that story about the swan princess and her prince? Back then Tatsuki thought it was stupid for someone to take their own life in that way while Chizuru found it romantic and endearing. Now you two have completely switched sides."

Despite the fact that Momo's face was smiling as she spoke, a few tiny tears running down her cheeks quickly turned into large ones cascading from her eyes without stop. Momo's speech was the straw that broke the camel's back. The next moment, all the Inoue sisters were not even trying to fight their tears as they clung to each other in their grief. Ichigo was not at all surprised when Rangiku suddenly appeared among the girls and cried along with them.

His friends were standing stoically behind the sisters, but it was easy to see that each young man was very close to losing his composure at the sight of so much pain.

Ichigo had not shed a single tear throughout this entire scene, but that did not mean that his was completely unaffected. His whole body ached and groaned under the strain of trying to keep himself together after all that had transpired. The enormity of what had happened was slowly starting to seep into his consciousness.

He had failed. Orihime was gone.

**Author's Note:**

This was hard to write, just like the scene from The Common Thread when Orihime cried herself to sleep (if you don't know what I am referring to, then you can check the story out and read for yourself) and I hope it didn't come off as cheesy or forced. Lots of swirling emotions in here and lots of dialogue from characters that I really hope I portrayed accurately and realistically.

Not much more to say after that...I'm hoping the next part will be up soon and everything will come to its natural conclusion.


	17. The denouement

Transforming Love: Part 17

The next thing he knew, Ichigo was being pushed aside as a man Ichigo vaguely remembered from somewhere knelt over Orihime's prone form.

"What's the bi-Hey! What are you doing?"

Ichigo's surprised inquiry quickly turned into a yell of outrage as he saw the man lifting Orihime's torso from the ground.

As Ichigo prepared to jump the man and demand to know what he was doing, he felt a pair of strong arms wrap around his chest and a voice say, "Wait a minute. Just hold on."

The voice registered as coming from Kisuke Urahara and while somewhere in the back of Ichigo's head a voice told him to ignore the older man, the rest of him listened to looked back to where the man appeared to be inserting something into Orihime's body through a syringe.

At first nothing happened, but after a couple of minutes Ichigo saw something that made him believe that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Orihime's chest was moving. Up and down exactly as if she were breathing.

"That's not possible," Ichigo mumbled.

The moment he spoke those words, Kisuke let go and Ichigo pulled himself over to where the man and Orihime were. For whatever reason, the man laid Orihime's body in Ichigo's arms and sat back himself to see the results of his work.

On Ichigo's part, he said nothing when Orihime was placed in his arms again and he watched expectantly for something…even though he didn't know exactly what it was yet. Then it happened.

Orihime's lips parted slightly and she gave a soft moan.

Without thinking, Ichigo heard himself call her just as softly.

"Orihime?"

At the sound of his voice, Orihime's eyes cracked open the tiniest bit and then painstakingly opened. When her eyes were fully opened, Orihime stared into Ichigo's face in an unfocused way until she blinked slowly a few times and her eyes filled with life again.

Since he had been so focused on her face, Ichigo had not noticed Orihime's delicate hand haltingly reaching up towards his own face until he felt something cold press against his cheek. He jerked slightly in surprise at the suddenness of the touch but also because her hand was still rather cold.

Reacting instinctively, Ichigo gathered Orihime closer to himself in order to warm her cold body. Orihime made no protest and instead made a weak motion as if she were trying to snuggle closer to him so as to warm up faster.

Her hand was still on his cheek and now Ichigo could feel her gently and soothingly stroking that spot. Once again his body reacted to the stimuli without his full comprehension and he suddenly felt his own hand covering hers. The moment his hand met hers, Ichigo could feel Orihime's natural warmth beginning to return to her body.

And then, he did something he hadn't done since the death of his mother over ten years ago.

He cried.

* * *

><p>The next morning, Orihime asked Kisuke and Mayuri to help her explain the plan since her voice was still recovering.<p>

"Well, it was like this," said Kisuke, "We knew that Aizen's entire plan revolved around Orihime and that her sisters had only been used as collateral. So, therefore we knew we needed to flush him out."

Kisuke leaned back as he said, "Now, despite the fact that we could just reveal Aizen's entire scheme by bringing her and her sisters to the castle and have him locked away, we came to the conclusion that it was far too risky."

Ichigo cut in angrily stating, "Too risky? Orihime walked off of a cliff and nearly died and you say arresting Aizen was too risky?"

Kisuke was not at all fazed by Ichigo's outburst and said, "I am referring to future risk, Prince Ichigo. Yes, we could have arrested Aizen on fairly solid grounds, but the fact remained that in his mind he had not lost his game. In prison, he could still make plans for the future and try to do something even more horrific when you and Orihime were married and possibly had a family. If you think that the kind of game he was playing now was bad, just try and imagine how much worse it could have been five, ten or fifteen years down the road."

Looking into Ichigo's eyes, Kisuke said, "You, Orihime and everyone else would possibly have even more to lose in Aizen's game."

Kisuke continued with his explanation, saying, "In order to defeat Aizen, Orihime knew that she had to show him that he did not control her. Aizen was not playing this game for money or love. He wanted power, control over Orihime. He said he wanted to break her. By showing him that she was not afraid of death and even taking her own life, Orihime showed Aizen that he could never had controlled her. That she was stronger that he could have possibly imagined."

Everyone was silent for a time, before Keigo piped up tentatively, "Well, that's all well and good, but…why…how…"

To his great relief, Mayuri cut off Keigo's fumbling question and said in his rather condescending tone, "You are curious as to how we managed to kill the young queen and then bring her back to life. Am I right?"

Keigo nodded, but Mayuri would have gone on one way or another and said, "Orihime's 'death' and 'resurrection' were induced by my D to L elixir, short for Death to Life."

Here Mayuri launched into a very long and tedious explanation on how there were two elixirs: one to induce a kind of paralysis that would mimic the appearance of death, from the cold skin to the lack of a pulse, and another to revive the person once again. The tedious part came in the fact that Mayuri felt no explanation was complete until he had told just about every detail on how to make both elixirs and even a bit on how he had stumbled upon creating such a scientific masterpiece. By the end, even Nemu, who had expressed a very little interest in the beginning, was starting to feel her eyelids grow heavy as the eccentric man droned on and on.

Finally, Yoruichi, who was sitting in between her husband and said scientist, found the opportune time to cut in on Mayuri's monologue to say, "So you understand how we 'killed' Orihime and why she chose this course of action, but I'm sure most of you are wondering how she managed to survive the plummet from the cliff into the ocean."

A few heads nodded and Yoruichi inclined her head in Kisuke's direction as she said, "He'll tell you about the body briefly and then I'll explain the fall."

Kisuke smiled at his wife, before he turned back to the others and said, "For the past few years, I have been developing a new kind of human dummy called a gegai that is surprisingly life-like. When Ichigo looked over the edge of the cliff and saw what he thought was Orihime's body dropping into the ocean, he actually saw a carefully constructed gegai that strongly resembled Orihime. I must say the hair and the clothes were probably the most difficult parts to get right, but from what I gather, those were the very two things that had Ichigo convinced that he was watching Orihime fall."

Before anyone could say anything, Yoruichi went on saying, "There are a number of natural caves and tunnels inside this cliff that my friend Soi Fon discovered by accident a number of years ago when she was fishing for sharks. So the plan was for Orihime to walk off the cliff and Soi Fon, Mayuri, Kisuke and myself caught her with some sort of contraption that Kisuke built for the occasion, pulled her into the tunnel with us and then threw the Orihime gegai out instead. We followed the tunnel down to the beach, administered the Death elixir, sent Orihime afloat in the ocean and waited."

Ichigo interjected, asking, "Orihime, you said I wasn't supposed to come out. What did you mean?"

Orihime took a breath before she said in her healing voice, "I hadn't planned on you finding out about my confrontation with Aizen. I didn't want to tell you or my sisters because if something went wrong…"

Orihime looked down as she whispered, "I'm so very sorry for causing you all pain. It was never my intention to hurt you."

The Inoue sisters murmured reassuring phrases to their sister, until Kisuke cut in saying, "Originally, Yoruichi and I were going to confront Aizen with Orihime's dead body and inform him that he had lost, but…as painful as it was, I really think it was best that Ichigo took on that part."

Kisuke concluded with, "Aizen is not ever going to repent for what he has done and I doubt the whole scene last night moved his heart in the slightest. Even as we speak, he could have heard of Orihime's recovery and be developing plans to exact his revenge because of his loss. However, I think he has been thoroughly defeated. Aizen believed it was a win-win situation for him, that no matter what choice Orihime made that he would still be in control of her and her life. Seeing her dead body and all of her loved ones crying for her, he would have to have seen that she had taken her life into her own hands and that those whom she loved most in the world could not be harmed by him anymore because they were of no use to him. She was beyond his control."

Wrapping his arm around his wife's shoulders, Kisuke said, "I believe it is safe to say that this ordeal is over."

**Author's Note:**

You guys didn't really believe I was really going to kill her off, did you? Most of the elements during Kisuke, Yoruichi and Mayuri's explanation were left vague for the simple reason that I like a good twist, but I am not nearly as skilled as Agatha Christie, Sir Doyle, Charles Dickens or any other great author and hiding the significance of certain things like the D to L elixir, so...well, you get the idea.

There might come a time when I will write a story with a more tragic Shakespearean end (despite what some may say, I don't think Fight to the Finish was that sad because she didn't die...she simply could no longer exist in the world of the living and I did leave a little hint for your imaginations about how she and Ichigo could eventually be reunited...), but this was definitely not that time.

Even though I think I know how people will respond, I'd still like to ask the question: should I write an epilogue or just leave this alone? Let me know what you think, if you would be so kind.

However, even if I write an epilogue or not, I would like to give everyone a big hug and thank each and every one of you for the help, support, critiques, idea suggestions and just extremely kind thoughts that you have given me throughout the writing of this story.

THANK YOU! :)


	18. Epilogue: Change

Transforming Love: Epilogue

The peaceful morning was disturbed when a highly enthusiastic voice suddenly bellowed, "Good morning son! Time to get u-oooofff!"

To any listener, it most likely sounded like the person who had been yelling was unceremoniously cut off by some outside force…if one had to guess, it was probably a fist or knee to the yeller's gut planted there by the person who was being yelled at.

This could be confirmed moments later when a much louder and far more irritated voice bellowed, "What are you doing? What kind of father tries to wake up his son using an actual broadsword? Are you trying to kill me?"

From behind the door, it is difficult to make out the groaned out response, but the second voice huffs and growls loudly, "You'd better believe it. Why should I show mercy to someone as utterly hopeless as you?"

Other sounds throughout the castle included cooks preparing food and berating the young helpers to move faster as they went about their chores, people rising and beginning to get ready for the day, livestock and their keepers yawning loudly as a new day began so that one might think that it was just another day.

However, upon closer inspection, one would discover that while everyone might seem to be going about their tasks as they always do, there was in fact a kind of lightness of step, glow in the face and sense of anticipation that most certainly was not normal.

Today Crown Prince Ichigo Kurosaki of Tensho and Queen Orihime Inoue of Rikka would join their lands, subjects and hands in a binding union. Anyone who had observed them for the past few months would know that both of their hearts and souls had been devoted to the other, but today they would speak the vows to make it official before God and man.

So, as Ichigo was dealing harsh punishment out to his father, on the other side of the castle, Orihime was dealing with her pre-morning jitters in a different way.

Her sisters, cousin Rangiku, soon to be sisters-in-law, and a few other women were bustling about and chattering non-stop about anything and everything they could possibly think of while Orihime observed with a wistful smile on her face. Once in a while, Orihime would laugh softly when something happened like Yachiru dressing up Isane's hair with any and every flower and bauble she could possibly lay her hands on until Chizuru finally stepped in and oversaw Yachiru's next attempt at hair dressing.

However, if one were to look closer, one would see that Orihime seemed quite distracted and lost in her own thoughts. From the expression on her face, they were not uplifting thoughts.

Rukia noticed her sister's detachment then looked over to see Tatsuki had observed Orihime's gloom as well. They exchanged a knowing look before Tatsuki inclined her head in the direction of the door to which Rukia nodded in understanding. Trying not to draw too much attention to herself, Rukia meandered out into the hallway and then started making her way towards the only person who could possibly be able to help Orihime at this point. Not for the first time did Rukia wish that their adopted father were still alive or better yet Orihime's mother, but there was no point in dwelling on the past.

It wasn't long before she was clearly able to hear the man she was seeking still bellowing like an enraged bull only this time it seemed as if there was someone else who was yelling just as heartily.

"I'm being serious! If I don't have the real ring IN MY HAND in two minutes someone's head is going to roll!"

"We all told you that we don't have it! Get that through your thick skull!"

"I know you guys think this is funny, but I'm really going to murder one of you so you'd better start deciding who it will be if that ring doesn't turn up!"

Rukia had just reached the door and was preparing to knock and face whatever consequences it could hold when her hand was gently hindered by a much larger one. Turning, Rukia faced the smiling face of King Isshin.

"I don't know what business you may have with my son, but I would say now is not really the best time unless you would like to lose most of your hearing."

Rukia nodded her head in understanding and said, "Thank you for the warning, Your Majesty, but I need to talk to him about something very important."

The king turned his head towards the door and grimaced slightly before he turned back to Rukia and said, "If you are absolutely sure then go ahead and knock. May I ask, however, if there is anything I can do to help?"

Rukia was about to politely decline the king's offer, when a thought struck her. Maybe the king could help her sister. So she nodded her head, led King Isshin through the halls and explained about Orihime's condition and what she thought might help her sister. Surprisingly enough, King Isshin listened attentively and seriously, only asking a few questions to clarify a few points.

Before they reached their destination, King Isshin excused himself for a few minutes on the premise that he needed to fetch something that might help. Rukia waited for him for about seven minutes until King Isshin returned carrying a small bundle.

When they reached Orihime's chamber, Rukia asked him to wait in the salon area while she went in to fetch her sister. Tatsuki looked over at Rukia when she entered the room and when Rukia nodded in confirmation, Tatsuki made her way over to Orihime and whispered something in the young queen's ear. Orihime looked at Tatsuki in surprise, but got up and followed her sister over to where Rukia stood.

Rangiku noticed and called over, "Where are you going, Orihime? You're not ready yet!"

Rukia replied quickly, "King Isshin is in the other room and he wanted to have a word with her. She'll be back in a few minutes."

No one protested and continued getting ready as Rukia and Tatsuki closed the door behind Orihime as she walked into the salon.

King Isshin was looking out of a window when he heard soft footsteps behind him. He turned with a warm grin on his face, but his grin quickly evaporated into a shocked expression when he saw the young queen standing before him. In the light of early morning, wearing her bridal dress with her hair hanging loose about her shoulders, the king had to catch his breath at just how much Orihime looked like his bride from over twenty years previously. Isshin was suddenly reminded of how Masaki and Tohru, Orihime's mother, had sometimes been mistaken for sisters even though, as far as anyone knew, they were not near relations.

Orihime could not fail to notice King Isshin's surprise and she asked in a soft, concerned voice, "Are you all right?"

The king shook himself out of his daze and replied, "I'm perfectly fine. I was just struck by how stunning you are."

Orihime's mouth opened slightly in surprise before the color rose in her cheeks and her gaze became completely absorbed in studying the floor. After a few moments of silence, King Isshin walked over to gently grasp Orihime's hand and guide her over to the window seat.

They sat in silence for a few moments before Isshin asked kindly, "What seems to be the trouble?"

Even though Orihime had regained the use of her voice, her vocal chords still had not completely recovered and it didn't seem as if they ever would.

In her soft, husky voice Orihime replied slowly, "I'm not really sure how to explain it. The only man I have ever cared for more than Ichigo was my father. He is a man whom I trust, honor, respect and love and more than that he has told me that he feels the same way about me, so there shouldn't be this feeling of…fear."

The last word was spoken so softly that King Isshin almost didn't catch it. Rather than acting on his first impulse to jump in and assure her that there was no reason to be afraid, Isshin instead listened to a small voice in the back of his mind telling him to wait.

Orihime's trembling hands covered her face so that is was rather hard to understand her, but Isshin managed to understand her strained voice saying, "I can't help these doubts that I'm not good enough or the questions rolling around in my head asking me if I can really live up to everyone's expectations…especially Ichigo's."

Taking her hands away from her face, Orihime continued, "When I first took on the role of queen for my country, I had some of the same doubts. However, because I had my sisters to support and encourage me, I was able to make it through all right. Even Sir Aizen helped me to fulfill my duties as queen despite the fact that he was only doing it in order to grow closer to me and learn about…my weaknesses."

When Orihime faltered to continue, Isshin asked, "Are you afraid that you will be naïve again in the future? That because of you, your family, your subjects, your husband or even any children you may have could be targeted and harmed again? Is that what you're thinking?"

Orihime raised her eyes and nodded. Isshin could see a little relief in the depths of those warm gray eyes that he understood her, but most prevalent were the emotions of insecurity and helpless fear. In spite of himself, Isshin found he had to take a few deep breaths in order to calm himself before her negative emotions affected him too.

When he had composed himself, Isshin looked back at Orihime and said, "While I wish your father Naruhito were here to tell you this himself, I am going to be your father in a few hours so I will speak to you as I would my own daughters.

"As strange as this sounds, your feelings of fear over the future are completely natural. You and Ichigo are making a life-altering decision today that will impact the rest of your lives, so it is only natural that you feel unsure and unready for this moment."

Isshin smiled indulgently at Orihime as he went on, "I'm sure that as a little girl you used to dream of the day you would be married and imagine the beautiful gown you would wear, the delicious feast that would be prepared in your honor, the guests who would arrive to wish you and your husband happiness and all the other wonderful events that make a successful wedding."

In a more serious tone, Isshin continued, "However, that dream is quickly becoming a reality and because you are a woman now, you understand all the responsibilities and duties that come after the wedding. For any normal woman, those kinds of tasks would be difficult enough, but you have the added burden of ruling a kingdom as queen, so you not only have the obligation to care for your own husband and possible children in the future, but the husbands, wives and children of your subjects as well."

Covering Orihime's smaller hands with his own, Isshin finished in a firm yet kind tone, "Don't forget, though, that you won't ever be alone. As your husband, Ichigo has just as much responsibility as you do and he will care for you as you do him. During the ceremony, you will make vows to one another promising to be faithful to the other in any situation and aspect of life no matter the cost. Ichigo will keep his promise and I know you will as well."

Orihime looked more encouraged, but still had a trace of doubt left in her eyes as she asked, "But what if I hurt him again?"

Isshin looked at Orihime very seriously as he said, "The situation with Sir Aizen was something neither of you could control. As you and Ichigo will find out sooner or later, there are some things in this life that you cannot control and you must make tough decisions that will somehow benefit the good of all."

Turning his attention to the small bundle in his lap, Isshin said slowly, "My wife and your parents were taken from us long before anyone would have anticipated. Not a day goes by when I don't wish my darling Masaki was still here with me…but I am grateful for the time I was able to spend with her."

Looking back at Orihime, Isshin finished by saying, "It is entirely possible that either you or Ichigo could die at any time, but do you want to taint the time you do have together by worrying over something that may or may not happen in the near future? As cliché as it sounds, cherish the times you spend together, even if some of them include disagreements or hardships because all of them, good and bad, will make us stronger later on."

During Isshin's speech, Orihime's eyes had slowly lost their fear and doubt, but not the glistening tears. When he finally finished, those same tears were finally let loose and as they fell, Orihime felt the heavy burden on her heart fall away. In response to Orihime's tears, in true fatherly fashion, Isshin had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and allowed her to cry away her negative emotions.

When she finally finished crying, Orihime's still rather watery voice said, "Thank you, You-" but she was cut off when the dark-haired man gave her a dejected expression and she quickly corrected herself saying, "Thank you Father."

Isshin gave a deep, completely characteristic sigh as he said in a resigned tone, "Well, I guess 'Father' will have to do for the time being."

Giving Orihime a pleading look, he said, "However, I REALLY wish you would call me something like 'Daddy' or 'Papa' or even 'Father Dearest'."

Before Orihime could reply though, Isshin looked down in his lap and said, "Criminy, I almost forgot about this!"

Carefully opening the bundle as Orihime looked on in curiosity, Isshin pulled out two pieces of the most stunning jewelry. The first was a small tiara made of gold with small blue flowers made from carefully crafted sapphires. The second was a necklace with a gold chain from which hung a pendant that was made with several large pearls surrounding a deep blue sapphire.

Orihime could only gap at the finery as Isshin said, "I would be most honored if you would wear these two pieces at your wedding today."

Unconsciously, Orihime laid a hand over her heart as she replied, "They're beautiful."

Isshin cleared his throat as he said, "These are both actually pieces that belonged to my dear Masaki and your mother, Tohru. The necklace is Masaki's and the tiara is Tohru's and both were worn by the queen's on their wedding day. I know that if they were here, they would be delighted if you would wear them on your own special day."

As she turned her gaze back to Isshin's eyes, a fresh rounds of tears were already springing into her eyes when suddenly the door flew open and Rangiku followed by Chizuru and a couple ladies-in-waiting.

Upon seeing her cousin near tears, Rangiku stormed over and all but yelled in the king's face, "Just what do you think you are doing? The ceremony is in less than ONE HOUR and we haven't even begun to get Orihime ready and now here I come in and see that she has been crying!"

Yanking Orihime to her feet and pushing her in the direction of the other women, Rangiku turned back to continue scolding the king, proclaiming, "If I wasn't so worried about how we are going to managed to get rid of Orihime's puffy eyes in less than an hour you can be sure that I would demand to know what you told Orihime to make her cry in the first place! King or not!"

Stalking back to the room, Rangiku called over her shoulder, "If Orihime doesn't look as beautiful as she could have during her wedding, I am going to tell everyone that it was YOUR FAULT!"

And with that, King Isshin was left alone. When he looked down at the cloth in which he had carried the pieces of jewelry, he saw that they were gone and breathed a sigh of relief because Orihime had had the presence of mind to take them with her. Now he didn't have to worry about knocking on the door and facing that brassy young woman again…

* * *

><p>An hour later, the guests were all seated, the bishop and his subordinates were in place, the groom and his groomsmen were waiting patiently at the front of the room and the entire staff and guard were standing at attention in their proper places. There was not a single common person either in the kingdom of Tensho or Rikka who had wanted to miss this monumental occasion, however, due to lack of space, the commoners were all made to wait outside the church and in the town streets. In order to please their subjects, when the prince and his bride queen were married, there was to be a spectacular procession that would enable the crowds to share in the couple's happiness.<p>

Ichigo looked like the epitome of composure and patience on the outside, but inside he was barely able to keep himself from fidgeting. Since the disaster of the missing ring had been averted (he had finally resorted to 'torturing' Keigo (non-violently, of course...unless you believe that tickling someone is violent) who had immediately produced the ring which had been hidden on one of the servant's ornamental hats (so technically, none of Ichigo's friends had had the ring in their possession…)), there was nothing else that occupied his thoughts more than this upcoming ceremony.

What if he missed one of his cues? What if he fumbled over his vows? What if Orihime somehow managed to get tangled up in her dress and fall, but he wouldn't know or be able to help her since his back would be turned? What if the ring didn't fit?

A sharp, but surreptitious elbow to his ribs snapped Ichigo out of his roiling thoughts. Also, because he was so surprised and was unable to catch his breath, Ichigo couldn't bellow at the culprit, who happened to be Renji.

Out of the corner of his mouth, Renji murmured, "Would you quit looking as if you were being forced to swallow slimy toads? One would think you might think that you didn't want to get married."

Ichigo hissed back, "You try getting married first and then lecture me on how I'm supposed to look right now."

Uryu's condescending tone drifted their way as he said, "Would you two at least attempt not to act so idiotically? This is an important event."

Before either young man could say anything, the heralds blew their trumpets signaling that the bride and her attendants had arrived. Ichigo and his friends straightened up in response and watched appreciatively as the wedding began.

First came Rangiku and the Inoue sisters, walking in pairs down the aisle. When Tatsuki and Rukia, the final pair, reached the half-way point of the cathedral, Ichigo knew it was his cue to turn around in order to allow the bride to enter.

The sound of the gathering rising to their feet as one in order to honor the bride came moments before the sounds of astonished and appreciative murmurs and soft exclamations at the entrance of the bride. Phrases such as 'Such a lovely queen', 'She's like an angel' and 'I've never seen a more beautiful bride' reached Ichigo's ears and piqued his curiosity enough to turn his head slightly in order to see how his friends had reacted to Orihime's entry. From the stunned and appreciative expressions on their faces, Ichigo could tell that waiting for his bride was not going to be easy.

After what seemed like hours, a soft rustle of fabric alerted Ichigo to the fact that Orihime was standing so close that he only had to extend his hand a little ways behind him in order to touch her. The bishop began the ceremony and Ichigo barely managed to keep himself focused enough in order to respond at the appropriate times.

Finally, the bishop reached for his hand and then for the hand of the bride in order to join them, but it wasn't until a few more things had been said that Ichigo was at last allowed to turn and take a good look at Orihime. It was well worth the wait.

Ichigo was hard pressed not to stand and scan Orihime from head to toe over and over until he had absorbed every detail. His mind had to remain focused on the ceremony, but the struggle not to completely loose himself in the happiness emanating from Orihime's eyes as well as her entire being was difficult.

On Orihime's part, while Isshin's words had helped her to get over her doubts long enough to walk down the aisle, now that she was here grasping Ichigo's hand there was absolutely no fear or doubt left within her. Life would not always be perfect, but Providence had blessed her with a husband who would be good to her and take care of her as long as he was able.

Rings representing their commitment to one another were exchanged and vows proclaimed in front of the gathering were repeated so that all could witness and testify to their mutual agreement to remain faithful to the other through any and all events of life until only death managed to part them. The result of such demonstrations was that almost all the female eyes were watery and even runny while more than a few masculine countenances fought to maintain control over their optical faculties.

At long last, the bishop stepped back with a ringing voice that proclaimed, "I now pronounce you man and wife!"

Ichigo's response was to lift his bride's left hand to his lips and place a loving kiss on it. His eyes, though, were fixed on the eyes of his bride who wholeheartedly returned his loving gaze. At this point, the crowds could no longer contain their emotions and simultaneously stood to their feet, roaring out their approval.

The crown prince and his bride queen turned to face the well-wishers for a time before they proceeded out of the cathedral to an open carriage situated outside the huge doors. Ichigo helped his new wife into the carriage before he took his place next to her and the driver guided the horses out towards the anxiously awaiting subjects.

Even before the gates opened to give a better view of the royal couple, the crowds' cheers were clearly heard. The carriage rolled through the street as Ichigo and Orihime waved in gracious and grateful acceptance of their peoples' excitement.

When they reached the large town square, the carriage pulled up next to a large platform. The prince deftly exited the carriage and helped the young queen out. Offering his arm, Orihime allowed her husband to escort her onto the platform so that they could stand and greet all their well-wishers from there.

They stood and waved for a time before Ichigo leaned close to Orihime's ear and said, "I love you, Orihime."

Orihime immediately turned to face her husband with a look of reciprocated emotions on her face as she clasped Ichigo's face with her hands and drew him down so that she could lovingly kiss his cheek. At this display of affection, the already cheering crowd's noise nearly doubled in approval. When she pulled away, Ichigo responded by repeated the gesture to his bride and the resulting noise was quite impressive.

As he pulled away, Ichigo saw that Orihime's cheeks were prettily turning red but her eyes glowed in appreciation. Their first kiss had been the one she had placed on his cheek all those months ago and since that time, while they had shown affection for each other through the occasional holding of hands or brief embraces, these were the displays of affection they had shared as husband and wife.

A small grin crossed Ichigo's face as he raised his voice to be heard over the crowd, "I think they like it."

The expression in Ichigo's eyes was slightly mischievous as he said, "How about we step it up a notch?"

Before Orihime could ask him what he meant by that, her husband lowered his face to hers and kissed her full on the lips. While Orihime's eyes were initially opened in shock, they quickly shut as she basked in the sweet sensations she experienced as she allowed Ichigo to kiss her and she kissed him back. The roar of the crowd became deafening as they witnessed this public display of affection, but Ichigo and Orihime had drowned out the rest of the world.

The kiss was long, slow and innocently passionate and was the first of many to come in the years that followed.

Ichigo and Orihime had no way of knowing that the sharing of a kiss would mark some of the most meaningful events in their lives together. From witnessing the marriage of Orihime's sisters to fine young men, who also happened to be Ichigo's closest friends, to starting a family together. From averting war with Hueco Mundo by means of tactful negotiation with the help of Zenbonzakura and Shihoin to helping their countries rebuild after an unavoidable war with the nation of Scaffold Cross in which they would lose some trusted friends and advisors. From using the kiss as a way to show each other and the rest of the world how much they loved one another to using it as a way to settle arguments before the day finished since you cannot kiss your spouse lovingly and truthfully if you are upset. Life would not always be easy and there would be times when tears would flow freely and others when laughter would abound.

However, through the years one thing would remain the same. Ichigo and Orihime's love would remain constant and true while still transforming as the events in their lives occurred.

In the present moment, though, nothing else mattered except for Ichigo and Orihime sharing their first real kiss with one another as thousands of well-wishers cheered.

**Author's Note:**

Kermit the Frog said when he was playing the character of Bob Cratchit in The Muppet Christmas Carol, "Life is made up of meetings and partings." If you are concerned about the portion where I say that Ichigo and Orihime loose some trusted friends and advisors, I deliberately left that open to interpretation since it wasn't really that relevant to the story. We lose people we love all the time as we grow older, however, you as the reader can fill in the blanks in whatever way you desire. I never said it had to be a character whom we have grown attached to in this story...

Anyway, my greatest hope is that I kept everyone in character for the most part even with Isshin giving his speech/lecture to Orihime and that Orihime's fears seemed somewhat plausible. My idea is that she and Ichigo would have talked about such matters and worked things out, but when we get nervous such things tend to fly out of our heads.

As for the wedding ceremony, I hope that all seemed logical. I took some liberties just because I wanted to make things flow better. And that kiss on the hands and then the cheeks...I have to admit that I had to fit in one final practical joke since so many of you were clamoring for a kiss. Sorry, I was highly amused while writing it imagining how you all would react and the kind of comments I would receive as a result of that little joke. :)

This entire journey has been wonderful especially with all of you guys faithfully encouraging me and giving me such helpful critiques and suggestions. I can't begin to thank you all enough.

At this point in time (May 14, 2012), I will metion all of the people who have commented on my story both of deviantart and fanfiction so that I can start to show my gratitude:

126amy/Magdalena88, TikkiMikk, Ookoii, metsfan101, himelove22, nypsy, Grimmjowsgirl, DAVE37, animecouplesandpoems, dogyluvv, LuckyLolly, Cute2KnowU, hanime93, kaybro21, gweniepoo, *fatedperson, Animefangirl987, Skyqueen-Dolls, skaterichigo, RebelHybrid2246, Tamubelle, HoneyHaruka, TheSirKnite, BleachFan1115, Echo-Uchiha, AnimeMadMoo, smd0698, angelbattler, MadManTnT, GinGinsgril, CrEyeLoveToDraw1995/DeathBerryLover1995, oOWaterOoODropletOo, alondra0, iheartligers, HanamaruKurosaki5695, Sariniste, Angelina Cat, IchihimeIsTheBest, nova7011, Talita Silva, Lonewingwriter, Arasia, StoryBored, HappyFetus, foxfang27, Abiding Angel, Ashes2Ashes121, quietreaper, Arrankor, supremekikay24, sunflowerspot, *RenjiAbaraiZabimaru, x-Ichihime-x and NejiRenji15 (who also happens to be drawing some fantastic covers for EACH of the chapters on deviantart and has been doing a fantastic job, thank you so much sweetheart!). There were also some people who added this story to their favorites on fanfiction, but I couldn't get all of your names since I don't have the emails anymore. Thank you to each of you as well!

Now that I have compiled that list of people, it sounds sappy, but I'm starting to feel a little misty-eyed. Thank you, thank you, thank you to each and every one of you for everything. Big hugs and enormous chocolate-chip cookies to you all!

Since this story has come to its natural conclusion, it is only natural that another story is soon to follow... :)


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